Hans Goltz

Hans Goltz was a German book and art dealer and publisher active in Munich in the early decades of the twentieth century. Together with such figures as Alfred Flechtheim, Heinrich Thannhauser, and Herwarth Walden, Goltz belongs to a group of foundational German art dealers focused on promoting avant-garde art.

Goltz was born and raised in East Prussia as the fourth child of Benjamin Goltz, a linen manufacturer. Trained as a book dealer, Goltz settled in Munich in 1904 working for a local book and art dealer before striking out on his own in September 1910, when he purchased a bookshop and art dealership at Brienner Strasse 8. Hans Goltz Kunsthandlung doubled as an art gallery where, as of October 1910, Goltz organized exhibitions of works on paper by such artists as Max Klinger, Alfred Kubin, Egon Schiele, and Anders Zorn, among others. From February to April 1912, Goltz hosted the second exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter, featuring 315 works on paper. In September 1912, Goltz formed Neue Kunst – Hans Goltz, an enterprise that focused solely on contemporary avant-garde art. This new enterprise included the Galerie Kunst-Hans Goltz, situated at the prominent location in the city at Odeonsplatz 1, but Goltz also promoted the latest radical art through exhibition catalogues, a journal (Der Ararat, in print 1918−21), postcards, and fine art prints, as well as by organizing lectures and readings. Although the majority of artists shown by Goltz were active in German-speaking Europe, the dealer also incorporated emerging Parisian artists, including some of the Cubists. For the inaugural exhibition, Erste gesamnt Austellung, 222 works were exhibited, including two paintings and one drawing by Georges Braque, an unspecified number of works on paper by Juan Gris, one painting by Henri Le Fauconnier, (Abundance, 1910−11; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague), and seven drawings and two paintings by Picasso, among them The Fruit Dish (1912; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift from the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection). Goltz reproduced the painting as a postcard (Archives of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection), a copy of which was acquired by the Czech collector of Cubism Vincenc Kramář during his 1913 visit to Munich. The second and equally large exhibition II gesamnt Ausstellung, August−September 1913, included two paintings by Braque, two by Gris, and five by Picasso. Those by the latter included Woman’s Head (1908; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Violin and Grapes (1912; The Museum of Modern Art, New York), and Arlèsienne (1911−12; private collection). André Salmon wrote the preface for the catalogue.

Active throughout World War I, the politically turbulent postwar period, and the economically unstable Weimar Republic, by 1927 Galerie Neue Kunst – Hans Goltz had presented 160 group and monographic exhibitions. Goltz, however, struggled financially. Operating in a city reluctant to embrace modern art, the dealer relied primarily on clients who came from outside Munich. Among the paintings that entered Goltz’s gallery inventory was Vasily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II) (1912; The Metropolitan Museum of Art), purchased from Goltz by Alfred Stieglitz in 1913. As an art dealer, Goltz handled the artists’ works primarily on commission, but sometimes signed formal contracts like those short-lived ones with Kandinsky (1912) and Schiele (1912−13). His post-World War I contract with Paul Klee lasted five years.

The dealer died suddenly in 1927 at age 54. He was survived by his wife Gertrude and their two children, Hans-Joachim, who inherited his father’s company, and Charlotte, an artist.