Herwarth Walden

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Herwarth Walden (actual name Georg Lewin, born September 16, 1879, in Berlin; died October 31, 1941, in Saratov, Russia) was a German Expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines. He is broadly acknowledged as one of the most important discoverers and promoters of German avant-garde art in the early twentieth century (Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Magic Realism).

He studied composition and piano at the music academies of Berlin and Florence. But his interest embraced all arts. So he became a musician, composer, writer, critic, and gallery owner. He was best known as the founder of the Expressionist magazine Der Sturm (The Storm) and its offshoots. These consisted of a publishing house and journal, founded in 1919, to which Walden added an art gallery two years later. He discovered, sponsored and promoted many young, still unknown artists of different styles and trends. Later some of them became very famous: Oskar Kokoschka, Maria Uhden, Georg Schrimpf et al. When the economic depressions of the 1930s, and the subsequent rise of National Socialism, compromised his activities, Walden fled to the Soviet Union. He worked in Moscow as a teacher and editor. His sympathy for artistic avant-garde was suspicious for the Stalinist government. He had frequently to justify his approach to modern art — without success. Walden died as a political prisoner in Saratov, southern Russia, in 1941.

From 1901 to 1911 Walden was married to Else Lasker-Schüler, the leading female representative of German Expressionist poetry. She invented for Georg Lewin the pseudonym "Herwarth Walden", inspired by Henry Thoreau’s novel Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854).