Still Life with White Bottle

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur, Berlin, DE

1988

VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Art critic Paul Westheim (1886–1963), like Herwarth Walden (1878–1941), provided important support for the painter Ivan Puni. This still life used to be in Westheim’s collection. As a Jew and an uncompromising champion of modernist art, Westheim was at risk from the moment the Nazis took power. He fled to Paris, leaving the painting in Berlin with his life partner, art historian Charlotte Weidler (1895–1983). She emigrated to New York in 1939. Some years after Westheim’s death she left the work with the Leonard Hutton Galleries. A Swiss collector acquired it and gifted it to the Berlinische Galerie in 1988.