A Berlin institution turns 50: Galerie Taube 

Owner Klaus Märtens, who opened Galerie Taube in Berlin Wilmersdorf in 1973, had to close his premises at Pariser Straße 54 shortly before his anniversary for health reasons. But a 50th anniversary of such an institution should be celebrated!

So an idea was born for a special anniversary in the gallery Wolf & Galentz, to honor Klaus Märtens’ life’s work with an exhibition featuring exclusively works by artists who have exhibited at Galerie Taube.

Klaus Märtens (born on 22.05.1937 in Fichthof near Leba, district of Lauenburg/Lebork in Pomerania, today in Poland) has shown and otherwise supported many artists as a gallery owner and art mediator and his more than 250 exhibitions over the course of five decades. The Taube Gallery was a contact point for many artists, Märtens knows a great deal about art in Berlin and has been an institution in the Berlin art scene.

Professor Klaus Fußmann writes about him in the catalog published in 2018: “He is the man in the knows… No art dealer in Germany has so persistently and almost obsessively represented his concern, namely that art can not succeed in nonsense, but must measure up to things.”

Klaus Märtens was committed to figurative art – the Tagesspiegel called him the “guardian angel of realists” on the occasion of the gallery’s 40th anniversary – in his gallery he presented both young-and-coming and unjustly forgotten artists, such as masters of printmaking Wassily Masjutin, Eberhard Franke, Karl Rössing and Eddy Smith; as well as outstanding photographers, including Karl Blossfeld, Barbara Klemm and Lotte Jacobi. He gave his first solo exhibition to then young Chinese Liu Ye, who later became world famous. The Italian Adelchi-Riccardo Mantovani and the Ukrainian Vladimir Kravchenko, also became known in Berlin thanks to numerous exhibitions in his gallery.

Märtens showed paintings, prints, sculpture, photography, and drawings, and for each of his exhibitions published a small catalog, always beautifully done, along with a special edition of original prints – a remarkable achievement. Many of these catalogs will be on view at Wolf & Galentz.

We are pleased that so many of Taube artists are participating in this exhibition – many cheers to 50 years of Galerie Taube!