Olga Oppenheimer – Ein Leben in Fragmenten

In the organizer's words:

A guided tour with and by curator Dr. Markus Jansen.

She was a pioneer of modern art in the Rhineland - and yet fell into oblivion.

On the 140th anniversary of her birth, the Cologne City Museum is commemorating the Cologne artist Olga Oppenheimer and her extraordinary and tragic life.

Olga Oppenheimer (1886-1941) grew up in Cologne in a Jewish family that encouraged her artistic curiosity and development at an early age. As a co-founder of the Gereonsklub, she became a driving force behind Expressionism in the Rhineland and created a platform for artists such as Marc, van Gogh and Kandinsky in Cologne. Her own paintings, woodcuts and drawings were shown at major international exhibitions between 1910 and 1913.

The First World War, personal losses and a severe mental illness lead to the abrupt end of her artistic activity. Olga Oppenheimer was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in 1918 and murdered in 1941 as part of the National Socialist "euthanasia" program. Only fragments of her work have survived.

It is only now that her work and her creations are coming back into focus.