Skip to main content
Label Text

Mammen was born in 1890 in Berlin. She studied art in Holland, Belgium and 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 1920's is 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.

Mammen died in Berlin in 1976.

Source: Bulletin, November-December, 1976.


Exhibition History"Jeanne Mammen Retrospektiv (Retrospective)," Berlinisiche Galerie, Berlin, Nov. 8, 1997 - Jan. 4, 1998; Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Jan. 18, 1998 - Mar. 15, 1998

"People At Work" Des Moines Art Center, Feb. 1 - May 11, 1997

"Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Hoech, Kaethe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen," Des Moines Art Center, Apr. 23 - July 17, 1994; Galerie St. Etienne, NYC, Sept. 13 - Nov. 5, 1994

"Jeanne Mammen," (one-woman show of watercolors), Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg, Germany, Apr. - May 1971
Published ReferencesJEANNE MAMMEN 1890 - 1976: GEMÄLDE, AQUARELLE, ZEICHNUNGEN, Berlinischen Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 1997, color ill. pl.A371, p.152, b/w ill. p.53

"Jeanne Mammen," Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg, Germany, 1971, exh. cat. no.48, ill.

THE ART BOOK BIANNUAL: A GUIDE TO EXHIBITION CATALOGUES AND OTHER BOOKS ON ART, NUMBER TWO, Worldwide Books, Ithaca, N. Y., 1995, b/w cover ill.

DMAC Bulletin, Nov./Dec. 1976, cover ill.

DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.146, b/w ill. pl.84, p.147
DimensionsSheet (/Image): 19 1/2 × 14 in. (49.5 × 35.6 cm)
Accession Number 1974.101
Classificationswork on paper
CopyrightARS
InscriptionsJ. Mammen (lr in image with pencil)
Catalogue raisonnéMerkert, A371
ProvenanceArtist, Germany; Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg [acquired from the previous, by 1971]. Dr. Joseph H. Seipp, Jr., Baltimore, MD [acquired by 1974]; Des Moines Art Center [gift from the previous, 1974]
Im Café (In the Café)
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines