Gustav Wunderwald
1882–1945 · German New Objectivity painter and stage designer
Gustav Wunderwald (Cologne, 1882 – Berlin, 1945) was a German painter associated with New Objectivity, the movement that in interwar Germany depicted urban life with a sober eye. Before devoting himself fully to easel painting, he spent almost two decades in the theatre as a scenery painter and set designer in Cologne, Stockholm, Düsseldorf, Innsbruck, Freiburg and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
From 1918 he worked as a freelance artist in Charlottenburg. His paintings of the 1920s show industrial areas of Moabit and Wedding, streets of Prenzlauer Berg, tenements and bridges and stations, often with people reduced to anonymous figures seen from behind. In 1927 the critic Paul Westheim wrote about him and called him "the Berlin Utrillo". Under the Nazis his works were disparaged and he could no longer exhibit or sell, so he made a living tinting advertising films. He died in Berlin in 1945 from hyponatremia.
His work was rediscovered after the Second World War, and since the 1960s it has appeared in many exhibitions on New Objectivity. About 180 paintings are attributed to him, around 40 of which are considered lost, and much of his output is held by the Berlinische Galerie and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.