Fritz Heinsheimer

As a representative of Expressive Realism Fritz Heinsheimer was a master scholar of German painter Max Slevogt. At the age of just 18, he became a soldier in World War I and was severely wounded at Verdun. After the war, he studied at fine arts academies in München, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. Heinsheimer created paintings on World War I, landscapes, portraits, and sports images (boxers, runners, high jumpers, and cyclists). In 1931, he travelled to Java in the Dutch East Indies and was inspired to paint images of exotic worlds.

He was Protestant, but of Jewish descent, and was banned from working in 1933, although he was still able to use his studio. In 1942 Heinsheimer fled to Brittany and then survived in Paris as “Alsatian” under the pseudonym “Fernand Husser”. The works that he had to leave behind in Germany were all lost. After the war, he lived and worked in Wiesbaden. His later works were barely influenced by the developments in international art and embraced the melancholic landscapes of Southwest Germany.

The oil painting on canvas (75 x 98.5 cm) Eishockey (Ice Hockey Match) from 1928 shows a scene from the match of the Canadian Olympic team against the Berlin Skating Club in the Berlin Sportpalast. The lithograph of the same title depicts a scene of the Berlin club against the Cambridge University team, which met, among other events, several times at the Spengler Cup during this period. In der Kurve, also a lithograph, was published in the magazine Jugend in 1931. Hürdenlauf bei der IX. Olympiade in Amsterdam (Hurdle race at the IX Olympiad in Amsterdam) was another oil painting.