Fritz Heidingsfeld (1907-1972)

Heidingsfeld belonged to the Gdansk Painters’ Association Die Kogge and in the 1930s he participated in almost all exhibitions of the group that included August Finkel, Ottokar Gräbner, Willi Lützke, Robert Zeuner, Herbert Wentscher, Carl Dittmann, Heinz Wallenberg, Werner Weiss as well as Otto Dix. The latter he had met, along with Max Libermann, while finishing his studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. After the war Heidingsfeld was active in Nuremberg drawing on the landscapes of Kashubian or Nida, located on the Curonian Spit, for inspiration. His nostalgic, idealized landscapes often refer to Romanticism and Biedermeier, referencing German poetry and music. Some works call up Wagnerian ideas of German myths and gods, others use metaphorical, monumental symbolism. He was a product of the teaching at the Department of Painting and Graphic Arts at Gdansk University of Technology under the East Prussian landscape painter Fritz Pfuhle in the late 1920s.