Gertraud Stemmler

German Gertraud Stemmler was an expressionist painter who studied at the Academy in Stuttgart. She was first married to the Stuttgart painter Hermann Stemmler (1893-1918) who was killed in action in 1918. After his death, she married Jewish chemist Fritz Koref (1884-1969) and moved to Berlin. In 1935, Stemmler was banned from work by the Nazis, and in 1944 she was declared undesirable for the German nationality.

In 1939 the couple moved to Paris, leaving behind all of her previous work, which was then destroyed in 1942 in a bombing raid. In France, Stemmler was interned in a camp for 15 months. In 1942 the couple immigrated to Switzerland and received Swiss citizenship in 1947. She was a close friend of Willi Baumeister and his later wife Margarete Oehm (1898-1978).

In the German catalog, her entries are listed as Segelbootfahrer I und II (Sailor I and II) and Wettfahrt um die Boje (Race for the Buoy), in the international catalog only Pêcheur I and Pêcheur II (_Fisherman I and II).