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Isolde Monson-Baumgart: 1935–2011

Marian Bantjes | 22 November 2011

by Gunter Rambow

Isolde Monson-Baumgart died on 3rd November 2011. One month ago, on 2nd October 2011 I had the honour to open Isolde's last exhibition in my gallery in Guestrow. This was also the opening of the "Guestrow Art Night".

We had wonderful autumn-gold weather and in front of my gallery the Guestrow Jazz Bigband consisting of 30 youngsters, played their new pieces of jazz and occupied the complete street. The Guestrow Art Night is quite popular and we had approx. 300 art-interested visitors during the opening. Isolde arrived here one day earlier and so she was relaxed and smiling she joined the crowd. I try to remember the keynotes of my speech at the opening:

“I feel as it was yesterday, a young first-year student going on a pilgrimage to the cinema, it must have been 1959, they showed the films of “Neue Filmkunst Walter Kirchner”. A great many students in whole Germany, at least in university cities did the same.  In the cinema lobby we could see posters we had not seen before. These posters forced everyone to look at them and were studied most intensively. I’m talking of the posters of my teacher  Hans Hillmann and of Isolde Baumgart, and they did these posters for many years.

"Even today I can still discuss the strong feelings we had in front of these posters with many fellow students of the fifties and sixties all over Germany. These posters formed some kind of visual homeland, they were something like a poster school. Isolde's posters had a very special effect on me, I think because her work had a female, gentle and sensitive handling of drawing, photography and typography. Of course the Hillmann school was her background but her works nevertheless had a different and very independent position.”

During the whole night we had visitors coming and going, a really good Jazzband performed and then Isolde's nephew joined in—he is a famous pianist in Munich. It was a great poster party and there were six German AGI-members admiring Isolde's work.

Isolde Monson-Baumgart has left us now but her posters will remain and will comfort us in our grief.

—Gunter Rambow