Johanna Kanoldt

In 1909, Johanna Kanoldt was one of the few female founding members of the Expressionist ‘Neue Künstlervereinigung München’ (New Artists’ Association of Munich), yet, unlike her colleagues Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin, she has largely been forgotten. She came from the well-known Kanoldt family of artists. Her father, Edmund Kanoldt, worked as a painter in Karlsruhe, and her brother Alexander Kanoldt, a year her junior, is regarded as one of the most important representatives of New Objectivity. In 1920, Johanna Kanoldt took part in the "Exhibition of Works by Baden Artists" in Karlsruhe; in 1930, she was represented at the "German Art Exhibition Munich" in the Munich Glaspalast, as well as at the Munich New Secession’s spring exhibition there in 1931.
As a young woman, Johanna Kanoldt initially devoted herself to studying singing, but was unable to continue for health reasons. She therefore turned to writing and journalism. At the same time, she studied painting at various private art schools, as women were denied access to the art academies: first at the Malerinnenschule in her hometown of Karlsruhe, then at the Munich Ladies’ Academy, and quite late, in 1918, once again at the "Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts", which is regarded as one of the first schools for modern art. This school was located in a small garden shed at Georgenstraße 40 in Munich-Schwabing, not far from Kanoldt’s home on Nikolaiplatz. The subject of the painting, created in 1918, may well be a view from this garden courtyard, as the inscription on the reverse suggests. Johanna Kanoldt was represented at the Glaspalast exhibitions in 1930 and 1931 with the paintings ‘View into My Garden’ and ‘Bavarian Garden’, neither of which can be traced today. These are presumably similar motifs to our "View of Schwabing", although it is highly unlikely that the artist exhibited a work created as early as 1918 at the Glaspalast.

It is not until 2023 that the first comprehensive publication on Johanna Kanoldt will appear, in which the authors Karin Hellwig and Volker Schümmer pay tribute to her biography and her diverse literary and artistic activities. The artist is not present on the art market; she is not listed in the artnet and artprice databases. Consequently, the painting "Schwabinger Ansicht" is a true rarity.