Friedrich Wilhelm Kalb, Pandora

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				Price: USD 310,000

Description

‘Pandora’
Biography: Friedrich Wilhelm Kalb

Monumental painting  (2,4 x 2 meter) displayed at the Great German Art Exhibition 1943, room 15.
Bought by the Gauleiter of Düsseldorf, Friedrich Karl Florian for 25.000 Reichsmark.

Pandora’s box is an artefact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora, the first woman, in Hesiod’s c. 700 B.C. poem ‘Works and Days’. Hesiod related that curiosity led her to open a jar (box) left in the care of her husband, thus releasing curses upon mankind. Hope alone remained inside, the lid having been shut down before she could escape.
Visible in the painting is the jar in the hands of Pandora and a flute (symbol of culture) in the hands of the man at the right. The man at the left holds a javelin (symbol of power), and in his other hand a hammer and a pair of pliers (the tools of of Hephaistos, ancient Greek god of fire, metallurgy, and crafts, the brilliant blacksmith of the Olympian gods, for whom he fashioned magnificent houses, armour, and ingenious devices).

— displayed at the exhibition ‘Art in the Third Reich, Seduction and Distraction’, November 2023 – March 2024, Museum Arnhem, The Netherlands —

‘If man was shown as the dominator of nature, woman was shown as nature itself. She was the beauty of nature, or the playfulness of nature, and of course was as fertile as nature. She was shown over and over again in a state of ripeness; see the renderings of woman in myth by Friedrich Wilhelm Kalb….’ (‘Arts of the Third Reich’, Peter Adam)

This painting was displayed at the GDK 1943, room 15. The remains of a sticker on the back notes ‘Saal 15’ (room 15) of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst. It was bought at the GDK for 25,000 RM by the Gauleiter of Düsseldorf, Friedrich Karl Florian.
Friedrich Wilhelm Kalb also displayed a drawing named ‘Pandora’ in the GDK 1937 room 30. This drawing was bought for 300 Reichsmark by the New Reich Chancellery, but the location where it was hung is unknown.

In August 1945 the Allied forces discovered a large collection of art in Schloss Lichtenfels, at Dalwigkstal: ‘2,200 uncrated paintings, largely late 19th Century and contemporary, 9 crates of of paintings, and unknown quantities of plaster casts..’
According to an inventory list from the Headquaters Regional Military Government, Land Hessen-Nassau, dated 2 August 1945, a part of the collection belonged to Gauleiter Florian. Florian had, like other high placed Nazi’s and Nazi-institutions, stored valuable works of art in Schloss Lichtenfels for protection from Allied bombing raids. However, ‘Pandora’ by Friedrich Wilhelm Kalb was not found on the inventory list. In 1949 Florian was sentenced to six years in prison and fined 20.000 DM, because of his rank in the Nazi Party; he was released in 1951. His property was not confiscated, he could even sell his house for half a million DM to the Dresdner Bank.

Friedrich Wilhelm Kalb, ‘Pandora’ (painting). Photo depicted in the ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ from June 26, 1943, on the occasion of the ‘Grossen Deutschen Kunstausstellung’, 1943 in Munich.

‘Pandora’ by Kalb, displayed at the GDK 1943 room 15.

‘Pandora’ by Freidrich Wilhelm Kalb, displayed at the exhibition ‘Art in the Third Reich, Seduction and Distraction’, Museum Arnhem, The Netherlands, November 2023 – March 2024. Right: photo Eva Broekema.
 

‘Pandora’ by Kalb, depicted in the exhibition catalog ‘Art in the Third Reich’ by Jelle Bouwhuis and Almar Seinen, 2023.

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