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Mammen was born in Berlin,...studied art in Berlin, Belgium and in Paris and returned to her native city shortly after the outbreak of World War I. Although her paintings tended toward abstraction, her watercolors are more in the nature of caricatures... Germany in the 1920s was a world of surface glitter underlaid with moral decay and political and economic disorder. Mammen and her fellow artists stripped away the veneer and revealed not only the ugliness of the "Beautiful People" but also the miserable lives of the lower classes.

Source: DMAC Bulletin, November - December 1976


Exhibition History"Diversions: Images Of Entertainment And Amusement," Des Moines Art Center

"Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Hoech, Kaethe Kollwitz, Jeanne mammen," Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA 4/23/94-7/17/94; Galerie St. Etienne, 9/13/94-11/5/94

"Jeanne Mammen Retrospektiv (Retrospective)," Berlinisiche Galerie, Berlin, November 8, 1997 - January 4, 1998; Ulmer Museum, Ulm, January 18, 1998 - March 15, 1998
Published ReferencesGRAND STREET 69 (Summer 1999): Berlin, Vol 18, No. 1, repr. (color) p. 60
DimensionsSheet (/Image): 17 3/4 × 13 15/16 in. (45.1 × 35.4 cm)
Accession Number 1974.94
Classificationswork on paper
CopyrightARS
SignedJ. Mammen (l,r graphite)
InscriptionsKarneval (l,r mount)
Catalogue raisonnéMerkert, A301
ProvenanceArtist, Germany. Dr. Joseph H. Seipp, Jr., Baltimore, MD [acquired by 1974]; Des Moines Art Center [gift from previous, 1974]
Karneval (Carnival)
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines