Shaping a Passion
Alfred Flechtheim was born in 1878 into a German Jewish family that proudly boasted its long-rooted ancestry in Westphalia. They had worked as successful grain merchants for two generations and groomed their son from an early age to work in the family business, probably envisioning that he would ultimately assume the reins. Instead, Flechthteim was stirred by an overwhelming attraction toward art, which he noted was “everything to me.” He also observed that “there is something maddening about art: a passion stronger than gambling.”8
Fortunately, tending to the family business involved frequent travel across Europe. These sojourns, especially to France, allowed Flechtheim to hone and refine his knowledge and taste in art as well as build friendships and social networks within pertinent circles; he even managed to apprentice a bit at the famous Durand- Ruel Gallery in Paris, renowned for having elevated and consolidated Impressionism as an art movement.9
Flechtheim’s early supporters, mentors and collaborators in Paris included the legendary gallerists Paul Cassirer and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who had opened galleries in 1898 and 1907, respectively. He also established friendships with German painters Karl Hofer and Hanz Bolz at the Café du Dome in Paris. His own gallery would later become Hofer’s exclusive representative, and it exhibited his work on an almost annual basis between 1919 and 1933. 10 Flechtheim officially broke with the family business when he launched the Flechtheim Gallery in Dusseldorf in the autumn of 1913.11
His decision to transition from grain merchant to art dealer was certainly not an abrupt or eccentric one, but the outcome of multiple factors. On the one hand, the working with family and the tottering fortunes of the grain business took a toll on Flechtheim while his increasing immersion and experience in the art world probably pulled him into pursuing the gallery, which must have been a long-held dream. In terms of experience Flechtheim was, after all, a seasoned businessman and by Kahnweiler’s account, an unmatched salesman.12 And, furthermore, he already possessed a number of important artworks in his personal collection, including high–caliber pieces by Gauguin and Van Gogh. By choosing a career as an art dealer and merchant, he both continued and challenged the trend wherein many children of the period rebelled against the mercantile and commercial trades of their parents.
El rinconcito levantino 