Sascha Wiederhold

Sascha Wiederhold (born 9 March 1904 in Münster; died 20 January 1962 in West Berlin), was a German painter, graphic artist and stage designer.

Life Wiederhold was born Ernst Walter Wiederhold in his parents' Münster flat at Grevener Straße 17/18. His father Heinrich Wiederhold (1875–1915) was a sergeant and married his mother Maria Wilhelmina Anna Wiederhold, née Wild (1873–1959), in Düsseldorf on 25 April 1903. Wiederhold's younger sister Elisabeth (1906–1992) was born on 25 October 1906. Wiederhold's family left Münster in April 1907 and moved to Düsseldorf.

Wiederhold attended the Städtische Oberrealschule on Scharnhorststraße in Düsseldorf and finished school with the Obersekundarreife. Wiederhold's father was killed in the First World War. After several trips to Upper Silesia, Wiederhold took up studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1921 and attended the classes for commercial graphics and decorative painting led by Ernst Aufseeser (1880–1940). Aufseeser decisively influenced Wiederhold's painting style with his spectrum of design methods and areas of application. In addition, Düsseldorf and the Rhineland had a lively art and theatre scene that offered a variety of stimuli. As Wiederhold was homeless, he spent the night in a vacant official flat at the art academy on his own initiative. As this did not go unnoticed for long, he had to give up his studies at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums in July 1924 and leave the institution. This first exhibition demonstrated a wide spectrum of Wiederhold's artistic skills and was evidence of the development the artist had taken within a year. Wiederhold exhibited works at the Der Sturm gallery continuously until 1931. His second solo exhibition at the gallery Der Sturm took place in October of the same year. Wiederhold was also a member of the Sturm-Kunst group.

In 1928 he divorced Sibilla and their daughter stayed with her mother. Wiederhold married his second wife, the stenotypist Rosa Dorothea Schönfeld (1902–1983), on 15 September 1928.

Wiederhold left Berlin in the summer of 1929 to work in Tilsit at the municipal theatre there. In Tilsit there was a cooperation with the Ostpreußische Bühnen (East Prussian Theatres), which had been founded in 1927 in order to be able to organise guest performances from Königsberg for theatres in around 20 towns in the surrounding area. The director of the Tilsit municipal theatre, Rudolf Blümner, engaged Wiederhold and took him with him from Berlin to Tilsit.

When Herwarth Walden moved to the Soviet Union in 1932 and died there in 1941 as a result of the Stalinist reign of terror, Wiederhold lost his gallerist. and became deputy manager there in 1939.

In 1940, he remarried to his second divorced wife Rosa Dorothea. Nothing is known about the circumstance of the remarriage.

At a hitherto unknown date Wiederhold was conscripted into military service and became a British prisoner of war from 1945 to 1946. which he ran with his wife.

Laszlo subsequently included Wiederhold in the programme of his gallery Delta. The art dealer also sold works by the artist in his Basel flat, among other places.

As a co-founder of Art Basel, Laszlo exhibited Wiederhold's works at many art fairs, so that other art dealers also became aware of the artist and Wiederhold's works found their way into private collections.

In addition to the painting Madonna from 1924, the Berlinische Galerie has in its collection about 20 works on paper (mainly gouaches), which represent, among other things, various stage designs by Wiederhold for the Tilsit municipal theatre. In addition, there is a small documentary partial estate consisting largely of letters to Wiederhold from various employees of the Der Sturm gallery.

The Sprengel Museum in Hanover owns the large-format painting Figures in Space from 1928 in its collection.

The New National Gallery (German: Neue Nationalgalerie) in Berlin has in its collection the large-format painting Archers from 1928. The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin dedicated a solo exhibition to Widerhold from 2 July 2022 to 8 January 2023.