Informatica museologica, No. 45-46, 2015.
In memoriam, Obituary
IN MEMORIAM, OR HOMMAGE À CHARLOTTE (LOTTE) ZANDER. FRAGMENTS FOR A BIOGRAPHY
Vladimir Crnković
; Hrvatski muzej naivne umjetnosti, Zagreb
Abstract
In March 2014, after a long and difficult illness, Mrs Charlotte (Lotte) Zander died in her house in Mauernkirchstrasse in Munich.
From 1971 to autumn 1995 she was a successful and well-regarded gallerist in the Bavarian capital, and in 1996 she founded
her privately-owned museum of Naïve, Outsider Art and Art Brut, the first in Germany and one of the biggest and most important
in the world, in Bönnigheim, not far from Stuttgart.
She was born in Krefeld, on August 21, 1930, into the well-to-do family of factory-owner Julius Willibald Stockhausen, and thus
belongs among that tragic generation that had its youth shattered by World War II, but with a vast energy, élan and ambition
overcame all hardships. In her earliest youth she showed an interest in art, learned ballet from her childhood, and was obsessed
with music the whole of her life. Although Lotte Zander had started to collect her first votive paintings and glass paintings by
anonymous 19th century authors, as well as various specimens of the applied arts, particularly Zinn pewter pots and Art Nouveau and Art Déco German silver and glass vases at the end of the 1950s, it was not until she met and became friendly with the
Cologne gallerist Rudolf Zwirner that she opted for the systematic collection of artworks.
In early autumn 1962, she bought her first few works from him – glass paintings of Ivan Večenaj and Mijo Kovačić, and soon of
Ivan Generalić – and after a solo show by Matija Skurjeni was put on in the Zwirner Gallery at the end of May 1963, she bought
12 major paintings even before the vernissage. Something similar happened in 1965 in the same gallery, when there was a
presentation of works by Skurjeni and Ivan Lacković, where she also bought several pieces. From other sources she subsequently acquired several pictures by Mirko Virius, Dragan Gaži, Martin Mehkek, Franjo Vujčec as well as of Emerik Feješ and Ivan
Rabuzin. This choice of authors reflected the huge popularity of the Naïve at that time, particularly from the area of the former
Yugoslavia, primarily the painters of Croatian and Serbia.
If at the beginning of its work Galerie Charlotte was modest, hardly noticed by the general public, its closure was marked
spectacularly, with a large reception and richly designed media coverage. This did not just commemorate the almost quarter of
a century of her successful and uninterrupted career, for the gallery closed down with the simultaneous announcement of the
opening of Museum Zander. When this institution was opened, the life’s dream of Lotte Zander came true: her fascinating collection of artworks became not only fully accessible to the public, but at once acquired the status of a cultural asset. Accordingly
she was able to express her passion, her love and her artistic preferences and share them with the whole world.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
176935
URI
Publication date:
2.9.2016.
Visits: 1.125 *