Walter Kurt Wiemken

Walter Kurt Wiemken, a Swiss painter, was born in Basel in 1907 to German parents who had obtained Swiss citizenship in 1898. At the tender age of four months, he contracted polio, which left him with a lifelong disability. He resided in his parents' home throughout his life and established his art studio therein. His father owned a lithography business, providing him with early exposure to the arts. From 1923 to 1927, Wiemken attended the vocational school in Basel, where he was mentored by the painter Fritz Baumann, the founder of the Expressionist art group Das neue Leben (The new life). Consequently, his illustrations during this period exhibit a distinct Expressionist influence, and he associated with the Gruppe Rot-Blau, a group founded by students of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. In 1927, he spent the summer semester at the State University of Applied Arts in Munich, where he was instructed by Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke and Richard Klein. Following his stay in Munich, he traveled to Paris alongside the painter Otto Abt, where he created his final Expressionist pictures, predominantly gloomy street scenes. Subsequently, he shifted his focus towards Impressionism. In 1928 and 1929, he traveled to the artists' colony of Collioure in Roussillon and Ticino with lifelong friends Abt and Walter Bodmer. During these excursions, he painted fantastical landscapes. He and his friends visited Collioure numerous times until 1939. In 1933, he co-founded the Gruppe 33 alongside his friends Abt and Bodmer, as a protest against conservative trends in Swiss art and architecture, particularly in Basel. The Gruppe 33 were also staunch opponents of fascism. From 1936 to 1937, he was influenced by his friend Bodmer's constructivist art. In 1937, he traveled to Belgium and developed an interest in the surrealist art of James Ensor.