3861 - WIEMKEN, WALTER KURT (Basel 1907 – 1940 Castel San Pietro): "Those Waiting for Death"

WIEMKEN, WALTER KURT (Basel 1907 – 1940 Castel San Pietro): "Those Waiting for Death" Gouache signed and dated (19)31 upper left 20 x 18.8 cm (image dimensions), framed Provenance: Collection of Ernst and Hedi Oppenheimer-Trösch, Basel; Auction at Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, June 23–25, 1975, Lot No. 1097; Dr. Blaser Kallnach (Aarberg); Private collection, Switzerland. Exhibitions: Young Basel Painters from Paris, Galerie Aktuaryus, Zurich, March/April 1931, No. 50; Memorial Exhibition for Walter Kurt Wiemken, Kunsthalle Basel, May 10–June 2, 1941, No. 79; Walter Kurt Wiemken, Werner Hartmann, Richard Seewald, Willy Guggenheim, Max Truninger, Louis Conne, Kunsthalle Bern, February 1–March 1, 1942, No. 18; Walter Kurt Wiemken 1907–1940, Kunstmuseum Luzern, March 15–April 5, 1942, No. 73; Abstract and Surrealist Art in Switzerland, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, January 17–February 24, 1943, No. 21; Painting in Switzerland from 1900 to the Present, Surrealism and Constructivism: Wiemken, Bill, Leuppi, Kunststuben im Rösslyn, Zurich, October/November 1943, No. 2; Walter Kurt Wiemken, Kunsthaus Zurich, March 13–April 19, 1954, No. 22; Walter Kurt Wiemken, Kunsthalle Bern, June 2–July 1, 1962, and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, July 8–August 12, 1962, No. 42; 30 Years of the Gruppe 33 Artists’ Association, Kunsthalle Basel, October 26–November 24, 1963, No. 226; New Objectivity and Surrealism in Switzerland 1915–1940, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, September 17–November 11, 1979 (label on the reverse of the cover). Bibliography: Rudolf Hanhart, Walter Kurt Wiemken. The Complete Works, Zurich 1979, p. 243, No. 654 (with illustration). The son of a German lithographer, Basel-born Walter Kurt Wiemken followed in his father’s footsteps at an early age, studied printmaking at the Basel School of Applied Arts, and sought out the Rot-Blau artists’ group centered around Albert Müller. For Wiemken, artistic work involved great physical exertion, as childhood polio had left him paralyzed and he remained dependent on assistance until his death. Wiemken took a keen interest in the various movements of modern art of his time. After Expressionist beginnings, he turned to Impressionism while in southern France. Back in Basel, he became interested in Surrealism and, with the rise of National Socialist tendencies, in the anti-fascist-influenced Constructivism of his friends from the “Group 33,” of which he was a founding member. Wiemken’s oeuvre is characterized by shifting formal languages, by expressive yet deliberately reduced coloration, and by an intense engagement with contrasts in social life—all of which are exemplified in the work on offer: While Wiemken’s contemporaries celebrate cheerfully and exuberantly in the background at the ®Der Storch¯ dance hall, the dead rise menacingly from their graves in the foreground. This is a very typical scene for Wiemken, whose work also possesses a deliberate touch of morbidity. Walter Kurt Wiemken died in 1940 at the age of 33 when he slipped while hiking in Ticino and fell into the Breggia Gorge. His body of work, however, remains well-known to this day and has been revisited many times. Announcement time: November 6, 2026, 7:45 p.m.