Hanna Ahrens, Woman Portrait, 1928, oil on canvas Leinwand, 76 x 57cm, private owned, Foto © Frank Fenken

Lecture by Frank Fenken Hanna Ahrens – A Rediscovered Worpswede Painter

Through a flea market find, the forgotten artist Hanna Ahrens (1903–1985), who lived in Worpswede from 1931 to 1956, was rediscovered. In the context of the Gaukulturwoche Ost Hannover, she was represented in the 1938 exhibition for the Lower German Painters' Day with her vegetable still life. However, in later Worpswede art history, she was hardly mentioned.

At that time, the work of the Worpswede artists was to be represented at three locations: while the first generation of Worpswede artists was shown in the Große Kunstschau, the subsequent generations were displayed in the Philine-Vogeler-Haus and the Worpsweder Kunsthalle. Hanna Ahrens was part of the exhibition at the Philine-Vogeler-Haus, alongside artists such as Bernhard Hoetger, Sophie Bötjer, and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

With the exhibition, the Worpsweder Kunsthalle aims to shed light on the previously unknown works of Hanna Ahrens and her dramatic life story. At that time, she was officially declared mentally incompetent due to alcoholism and was banned from her profession by the Nazis. Her works are presented in the context of her contemporaries.