Helmmaske "epa": Mutter mit Kindern "olomoyeye"

Loed van Bussel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Ludwig Bretschneider, Munich, Germany
Galerie Schwarz-Weiß, Essen, Germany
Dieter Blum, Düseldorf, Germany
Gert Stoll, Berchtesgaden, Germany
Zemanek-Münster, Würzburg, 20 May 2006, Lot 249
Werner Zintl, Worms, Germany

Ludwig Bretschneider (1909-1987) was the son of a Munich art and antiques dealer and initially worked in his mother’s shop as a young man. When he put an ethnological object in the shop window there, the artist Klaus Clausmeyer (1878-1968) happened to pass by and asked him if he had any more such objects. That was the initial spark for Bretschneider’s trade in African art. In 1928 he went into business for himself.

Clausmeyer became Bretschneider’s mentor and his friendship with the famous stage designer Preetorius (1883-1973) also gave him access to the right circles. From 1955, Bretschneider was the head of the Art and Antiques Fair in Munich, and in this function he was, to a certain extent, the “top dog” for African art in Germany.

After the Second World War, Bretschneider sourced his African objects mainly from the Kegel-Konietzko company and from the London dealer Paul Wengraf. He was also known for buying objects from museums, for example the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. He travelled to Amsterdam every three months to look for objects at Jacques Vecht, the Alderinck art dealer, Loed van Bussel (1935-2018) and, occasionally, Leendert van Lier.

Bretschneider created a market for tribal art in Munich - he “recruited a staff of collectors himself and created a flourishing market for ethnography”.

Ludwig Bretschneider’s estate was auctioned by the Nagel auction house in 1999.