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Arnold Budczies’ collection of 283 graphic works by Edvard Munch is the last remaining large privately owned interwar collection, containing many early and hand-printed impressions. It is now going to be split up.
When Edvard Munch took up printmaking in the late autumn of 1894, he almost certainly hoped that prints would be easier to sell than paintings. Although his paintings were frequently exhibited and attracted considerable attention, he sold almost nothing. Since Munch had no wealthy family or other profession to fall back on, he had to find a way to earn a living as an artist. His first attempts at printmaking were applauded by many in the circle around the newly founded German journal PAN. One of the journal’s founders, Eberhardt von Bodenhausen, wrote to Munch that intaglio printing seemed to be his true medium and that, with a little more technical skill, he would surely earn a good income. In June of the following year, Julius Meier-Graefe, the journal’s editor at the time, published a small portfolio with eight of Munch’s intaglio prints. However, he repeatedly complained to Munch that sales of the portfolio were slow, so it could hardly have been a great financial success. Over the next few years, Munch eagerly explored the possibilities offered by the various graphic methods. In Paris from 1896 to 1897, he produced multi-coloured prints using intaglio, lithography and woodcut. However, printmaking still constituted an expense rather than a source of profit.
After returning to Berlin in 1901, Munch became acquainted with three men who would prove instrumental to his future career as a graphic artist: Kollmann, Linde and Schiefler. Albert Kollmann, a mystic and art lover, took a strong and intense interest in Munch’s art, and, in the following years, arranged many sales and commissions for the artist. One of the first things Kollmann did was encourage the art collector Max Linde, who had already incorporated paintings by Munch into his collection of modern French art, to acquire a collection of Munch’s prints. Linde also commissioned a graphic portfolio with portraits of his family and their estate in Lübeck . Visiting Linde, Hamburg judge and art collector Gustav Schiefler was so impressed by Munch’s prints that he decided to compile a catalogue of them. Published in 1907, the catalogue includes 247 motifs and became the most important – in fact the only – reference work for Munch’s prints for many years.
In 1904, Munch signed a three-year contract with the art dealer and publisher Bruno Cassirer to promote and sell his graphic works. However, Munch was not happy with Cassirer’s efforts. When it emerged at the end of the contract that Munch owed Cassirer more than 1,000 marks, Munch had to find a way to pay him to avoid an extension of the contract. He was rescued by Ernest Thiel in Stockholm, who agreed to send him money in exchange for prints. Thiel travelled to Lübeck to study Linde’s collection, as did the Norwegian industrialist Rasmus Meyer in Bergen. Meyer was also persuaded by Munch to buy a significant collection of prints.
Munch used the term ‘complete’ to describe the collections of both Thiel and Meyer. In a letter to Munch, Kollmann emphasised that Curt Glaser, the then curator of the Department of Prints and Drawings (Kupferstichkabinett) at the Berlin Museum of Art, intended to make the museum’s collection of Munch prints complete. Glaser also built up a considerable private art collection, of which Munch’s prints formed an important part.
After 1907, Munch had to arrange the sale of prints on his own. Being represented with a ‘complete collection of prints’ in well-known and reputable private and public collections was then a great advantage. Besides, Munch often insisted that his artworks would be more easily understood if they were viewed as a whole. Munch’s prints were never meant to be hidden away in albums or portfolios in storerooms and archives. The large, decorative impressions were intended to be displayed on the wall like paintings.
Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Munch lost contact with the market in Germany. The only German collector who was able to acquire new works from Munch during the war was Heinrich Carl Hudtwalcker. Hudtwalcker owned a cod liver oil company in Kristiania (Oslo), enabling him to buy works directly from Munch without being hindered by currency restrictions.
After the First World War, with Europe reopening for transport and cross-border contact, there was a high demand for new exhibitions of Edvard Munch’s art. In 1922, a major exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich showed more than 400 prints, many of which had been borrowed from German museums, as well as from the collections of Schiefler, Glaser and Hudtwalcker.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, new major collectors of Munch’s prints emerged. In Germany, Paul Rauert and Arnold Budczies amassed substantial collections of prints. In retrospect, these two collections seem to have been somewhat overlooked. It is only in recent times that provenance researchers have pointed to Rauert as the former owner of the large collection of prints auctioned by City Auction in Oslo in 1939. The name Budczies has remained a relatively well-kept secret until now, even though prints from his collection have been exhibited, most comprehensively at the Kunsthalle Bremen in 1970.
Arnold Budczies, a lawyer and banker, had been a supporter of Expressionist art from an early age. This interest in modern art revealed a different side to his personality, contrasting with his daily work as a lawyer and a member of the German Reichbank Board of Directors for many years. He was artistically active himself and was friends with several German artists. It is unclear exactly when he began to take an interest in Munch’s art, but he probably started to collect his prints in the 1920s. By the outbreak of the Second World War, he had built up a collection that is among the largest and most important collections of Munch’s prints, in terms of both quantity and quality. Budczies met Munch once, in 1936, when he was in Norway with Hudtwalcker, visiting the artist Rolf Nesch. Nesch had fled Nazi Germany three years earlier, settling in Edvard Munch’s homeland. Nesch’s prints were also well represented in Budczies' collection. During his visit to Norway, Budczies saw Munch’s wall decorations in the University Aula and stated in a letter to his friend Carl Hagemann that they had made the strongest impression on him. ‘Anyone who has not seen these pictures does not know Munch,’ he wrote.
When Budczies retired in 1931, he had more time to devote to his own artistic work and to collecting other people’s art. This took place at a time when the conditions for modern art in Germany were becoming increasingly difficult. Munch’s works were eventually declared undesirable in German museums and collections, making it controversial to collect his art. The same applied to German Expressionist art. However, some collectors, such as Arnold Budczies, chose to continue collecting this particular art. Not surprisingly, the supporters of Munch’s art during this period were the same people who supported the modern German artists. By buying their art, they not only supported the artists, but also saved their works for future generations.
Unlike the earlier collectors mentioned here, Budczies did not obtain his prints directly from Munch, but had to rely on auction sales and art dealers in Germany. During the 1930s, a good number of Munch’s prints came on the market, as previous collections were dissolved for various reasons.
At his death in 1932, Heinrich Stinnes’ collection of European prints comprised approximately 200,000 items, including many prints by Edvard Munch. The entire collection was eventually sold, with Budczies securing 37 impressions by Munch. All of these bear Stinnes’ characteristic stamp and are therefore easy to identify.
When Curt Glaser, due to his Jewish background, had to leave his position as director of the Art Library in 1933, he left Germany and sold off large parts of his private art collection. In the Budczies collection, 34 impressions are registered with Curt Glaser as provenance.
Among the intaglio prints from these two collections, there is a striking number of early impressions, experimental prints and states that were unknown to Schiefler when he wrote his catalogue. There are also some later prints from the Stinnes collection, including lithographs and woodcuts from around 1930, many of which were printed by Munch himself. The Budczies collection also contains several rare multi-colour prints, such as the woodcut Kiss I from 1898, the lithograph Separation II from 1896 and six of the eight mezzotints that Munch had printed in Paris between 1896 and 1897. The collection also includes a complete set of the Linde portfolio, which is a real rarity.
Budczies died in November 1943, two months before his contemporary, Edvard Munch. On her husband’s behalf, Budczies’ wife Else wrote to Munch to congratulate him on his 80th birthday on 12 December. She assured him that, despite their house in Berlin being badly damaged in the bombings, the art collection was safe. According to the family, the collection had been evacuated to a farmhouse in Upper Bavaria, where it was stored in the attic of the main house and survived the war unscathed.
Although this almost one hundred-year-old collection is now being split up, hopefully the impressions will find good homes in private and public collections, where they will be available for exhibitions and research in the future.
Arnold Budczies (1866–1943) was a prominent German art collector who specialised primarily in modern prints and expressive painting. A trained lawyer, he held high-level public sector positions, including Director of the Reichsbank and Privy Councillor of Finance. Despite his many professional commitments, he was passionate about the arts, not only as a collector, but also as a promoter of artists and, on occasion, a graphic artist himself.
His passion for collecting grew out of a profound interest in artistic expression, particularly in the works of the Expressionist movement. In the 1930s, he kept in close contact with gallery owners, artists and fellow collectors. Among his acquaintances were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) in Davos and Carl Hagemann (1867–1940) in Frankfurt am Main. During Easter 1936, he and Hamburg collector Heinrich Carl Hudtwalcker (1880–1952) travelled to Norway to visit the artist Rolf Nesch (1893–1975), and on this occasion also stopped by at Edvard Munch’s home. Arnold Budczies was much more than just a collector. He was a connoisseur and patron of the arts, actively circulating and appreciating works rather than merely hoarding them. After retiring in 1931, he was able to devote himself more intensively to collecting, as is evidenced by an increased number of purchases.
Budczies’ earliest purchases of Munch prints are not documented. It was not until 1928 that he started to write down where and when he bought the works. However, the records are not exhaustive. Budczies’ earliest documented purchases are from 1928 and were made at Ferdinand Möller and Max Perl in Berlin, as well as at Graphische Kabinett in Munich. Works that cannot be conclusively attributed were therefore probably acquired before 1928.
Budczies visited exhibition sales at Ferdinand Möller in Berlin, Graphische Kabinett in Munich and Galerie Commeter in Hamburg, as well as Nierendorf in Berlin, where he bought complete collections. He also participated in auctions at Max Perl and Paul Graupe in Berlin, C.G. Boerner in Leipzig, Commeter in Hamburg, and Gutekunst und Klipstein in Bern. Through intermediaries such as Carl Meder in Berlin and Emil Hirsch in Munich, he was able to procure special works from the collections of Heinrich Stinnes and Harry Graf Kessler, respectively. Budczies also purchased works directly from William Cohn. At the Max Perl auction in Berlin on 19 May 1933, he bought one of the largest bodies of works from Curt Glaser’s collection. A fair and amicable agreement was reached with Glaser’s heirs regarding the 42 prints purchased there, and they are therefore now free of any claims. The Glaser heirs will also arrange, after the auction, for the entry of these works in the Lost Art Database to be supplemented with a reference to the amicable agreement.
The uniqueness of this Munch collection makes it a significant contemporary document. Thanks to determined purchases in the 1930s, the works survived the Third Reich, when Munch was labelled a ‘degenerate’ artist. These incredibly rare pieces have also been shown repeatedly in important Munch exhibitions in recent years.
On 14 December 1943, Budczies’ widow, Else, wrote a letter to Edvard Munch to congratulate him on his 80th birthday. The letter ends as follows: ‘My husband was one of the few collectors who practised the art themselves, and he remained faithful to it, to your tradition, until his death at the age of 78. He left behind a large collection of your prints, which is safely stored. I just wanted to let you know that.’ The collection remained in the same family for more than 80 years. Over time, the wish arose that the works should now pass into new hands. We are honoured that this can happen in Bern, where Arnold Budczies acquired some prints from the former Heinrich Stinnes collection in June 1938.
