Thursday 14 January 2010

Angelika Hoerle

Angelika Hoerle. Comet of the Cologne Avant-garde
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
September 26, 2009-January 17, 2010
exhibition flyer

Angelika Fick Hoerle (1899-1923) lived hard and died young. In spite of her youth, she left a promising artistic legacy. Moving through the influences of WW I, the German Revolution and Dada, she developed artistic styles that foreshadowed Surrealism and the Cologne Progressives.

Angelika's apartment in Lindenthal, the ‘dadaheim' with its Schloemilch Verlag, was both a meeting place and the publishing house for Max Ernst's Fiat Modes and the international Dada magazine, Die Schammade. Nicknamed "Dada Angelika" by friends and dubbed the German Master of Dada by a newspaper, Angelika went on to co-found the Stupid Group and become a voice for women along with her best friend Marta Hegeman. When Angelika died of tuberculosis at 22 years of age, her brother, the artist Willy Fick, paid the back rent on the apartment where she had lived alone since the fall of 1922; he wanted to save her things. Willy Fick hid Angelika's works, and those of her politically active friends, from the National Socialists when the artists represented were labelled degenerate.

See also: Angelika Hoerle: The Comet of Cologne Dada an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).