With funds from the estate of the Essener couple Liselotte and Dr. Walter Griese, the Folkwang-Museumsverein was able to purchase the painting "Meine Schwester Annemarie als liegender Akt" (ca. 1935) by the German artist Kate Diehn-Bitt (1900-1978). With their bequest to the Museumsverein, the couple had stipulated that the funds would be used to purchase art "from the Expressionist and immediate post-Expressionist periods."
The acquired painting by Diehn-Bitt fits perfectly into the already existing collection of the Museum Folkwang whilst adding a female perspective of the so called "Neue Sachlichkeit". The work was created in the mid-1930s, when Diehn-Bitt's portraiture was limited to her immediate surrounding family members, as the national-socialist "Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur" had classified her painting as so called "artfremd."
According to Dr. Nadine Engel, curator of 19th- and 20th-century painting, sculpture, and media art at the Museum Folkwang, the painting "originates from the artist's most elaborated period, followed by even more complex compositions in the 1930s."
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