Ernst Thoms

Ernst Thoms (November 13, 1896 – May 11, 1983) was a German painter associated with the New Objectivity.

Thoms was born in Nienburg. He apprenticed as a painter from 1911 to 1914. At the start of World War I in 1914, he entered military service. He was captured as a prisoner of war and held in England for five years ending in 1919. In 1920, Thoms studied under Fritz Burger-Mühlfeld at the School of Arts and Crafts in Hanover. In Attic (1926), Thoms presents prosaic subject matter in an undramatic way that nevertheless, with its openings into glimpsed spaces, suggests a mystery.

Among the Hanover New Objectivity artists, Thoms was the only one who received any support from the Kestner-Society, which gave him a solo exhibition in 1926. He was also the only one who gained exposure in Berlin, where he had a solo show in 1928 in the Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf. He joined the Hanover Secession in 1931.

Thoms was in military service during 1939–40. In 1943, Allied bombing destroyed his house and studio, causing a loss of many of his works. He was given a retrospective at the Hanover Kunstverein in 1957, and in 1964 was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Lower-Saxony Order of Merit.

Thoms died in Wietzen in 1983.