'Portrait of Leon Schames', 1922

Hong Kong 2016
'Portrait of Leon Schames'

Galerie Thomas

Painting
Oil on canvas
148.0 x 90.0 (厘米)
58.3 x 35.4 (吋)
Verso signed and titled. With stamp of the Kirchner estate. The open minded Ludwig Schames (1852-1922) was of great importance to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner as an art dealer. In his art salon "Kunstsalon Ludwig Schames" in the Boersenstrasse 2 in Frankfurt he started early on to promote German Expressionism and later also Max Beckmann. Already in 1916 he showed a huge exhibition with works by Kirchner. The artist became known in Germany through these exhibitions at Ludwig Schames gallery and he found important private collectors like Dr. Carl Hagemann and Rosi Fischer, who bought many of his works between 1916 and 1919. Ludwig Schames died on the 3rd of July in 1922 and Kirchner was very sad about it. In July Leon Schames, his son, visited Kirchner in Davos. He was a physicist and not interested in continuing the gallery. So his nephew Manfred Schames took over the gallery and started his business in a new space in the Junghofstrasse 18. He continued showing exhibitions of works by Kirchner. In 1931 the gallery was closed because of the increasing reprisals of the National Socialists.