Kitchen Still Life with Herrings

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

1994

Nick Duncan-Brown

Anneliese Ratkowski was persecuted as a Jew under the Nazis and fled in 1939 to Belgium. After the war, instead of returning to Germany, she emigrated to the United States. Years later, when she resumed contact with Berlin, she perkily described herself in a letter as an “excellent painter” and “the youngest member of the ‘November Gruppe’”. In this way she made the acquaintance of the Berlinische Galerie’s first director Eberhard Roters. His successor Jörn Merkert then managed in 1996 to put on an exhibition of her works, which included the “Kitchen Still Life with Herrings”. Ratkowski gifted this and two other works to the Berlinische Galerie in the run-up to the show.