Author Description

A successful artist in Munich and Berlin and a member of the Communist party, Carl Heidenreich was deemed a degenerate artist after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. His exhibition in Munich was abruptly canceled and he was held by the S.S. at Berlin's Moabit prison. During the Spanish Civil War, Heidenreich joined an anti-Stalinist Spanish Communist Party's unit to fight against fascism. Following their defeat and his incarceration in Barcelona's Modelo prison, Heidenreich fled to the United States via Martinique, settling in New York. There, he was welcomed by the community of German Jewish intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher. Heidenreich became one of the most prominent and admired artists within this circle. Carl/Karl: Three Takes on Heidenreich is a compendium of new scholarship, important primary sources, and recent oral histories accompanied by previously unpublished images. This volume chronicles and interprets the exile artist's late work, focusing on his abstract paintings and works on paper produced in New York in the postwar years. New and historical essays offer perspectives on the role of exile and migration, anti-fascism and communist politics, and the nonvisual senses to aid in recuperating Heidenreich's unique work for the present. Contributions by Hannah Arendt, Kathryn Barulich, Alla Efimova, Rachel Schreiber, Monica Smith, Christopher Squier, Jackie Valle, and Anne Wagner.