Rudolf Nehmer (1912-1983), Blessed Are The Spiritually Poor, 1948

Rudolf Nehmer (1912 Bobersberg - 1983 Dresden), Blessed are the spiritually poor, 1948. Woodcut on yellowish wove paper, 20 cm x 15 cm (image), 45 cm x 30 cm (sheet size), signed “Rud.[olf] Nehmer” in pencil lower right and inscribed “Matth. 5,3” and condition “I” lower left.

- The wide sheet margin somewhat wavy, the image in excellent, colorful condition.

- The Abundance of Poverty -

This woodcut is part of Nehmer's most famous series, his pictorial interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount (Matth. 5,1-7,29), created shortly after the end of World War II. The print illustrates the beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:3).

The girl is so absorbed in admiring the butterfly that has landed on her hand that she forgets the world around her, while an old woman sits on the bench above her, looking up to the sky, full of trust in God. Her hands, folded in prayer, and the girl's hands are visually linked, so that young and old form a continuity and the butterfly, as a symbol of the free soul, belongs to both.

About the artist

Rudolf Nehmer studied from 1932 to 1934 in Dresden at the private art academy founded by Ernst Oskar Simonson-Castelli under Woldemar Winkler and, after a brief interlude at the art academy, was a student in Willy Kriegel's studio until 1936. After his first one-man show in 1935 at the Kühl Art Exhibition in Dresden, which was progressive until the Nazi era, Nehmer was represented at the major German art exhibitions in the following years. In 1938 he stayed in Worpswede. From 1941 he was a soldier on the Western Front and in Denmark, returning to Dresden from British captivity in 1945. After the war, he had his first solo exhibition in 1945. Nehmer was a co-founder of the artists' association 'Das Ufer - Gruppe 1947' and in 1951 a founding member of the artists' cooperative 'Kunst und Zeit'. He had numerous solo and group exhibitions in the GDR, culminating in a retrospective at the Galerie Neuer Meister on the occasion of his 60th birthday.