Au­gust & Marta August Sander

How Au­gust San­der Pho­to­graphed the Pain­ter Mar­ta Hege­mann (and Her Chil­dren’s Room!)
A pre­sen­ta­tion for chil­dren

Pre­sen­ta­tion in the Pho­tog­ra­phy Room
How proud and fierce she looks in Au­gust San­der’s pho­to! The wo­m­an we see here is the pain­ter Mar­ta Hege­mann, who used to be a teach­er. Her blouse and neck­lace look tousled, and she has all sorts of sym­bols paint­ed on her face. When Mar­ta Hege­mann paint­ed two mu­rals for a chil­dren’s room three years lat­er, it was again Au­gust San­der who doc­u­ment­ed her work and the re­sult with his cam­era.

The paint­in­gs were shown in 1929 in the ex­hi­bi­tion Raum und Wand­bild at the Köl­nisch­er Kun­stverein. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, they have since been lost. Thanks to San­der’s pho­tos, we know what they looked like—at least in black and white—and can try to re­cre­ate the chil­dren’s room. In this pre­sen­ta­tion for chil­dren, we use pho­to­graphs to learn about an un­con­ven­tio­n­al wo­m­an who al­so paint­ed for chil­dren.