Fritz Löw-Beer (1906-1976), a cousin of Grete Tugendhat, collected East Asian art starting from the end of the 1920s. Over a period of time he became one of the leading experts in this field with his collection achieving world renown. The major part of the collection is now housed in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart which organised an exhibition “In the Sign of the Dragon – on the Beauty of Chinese Varnishes” supplemented by an impressive catalogue on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Fritz Löw-Beer.
The collection of Fritz Löw-Beer was originally housed in the so-called Large Löw-Beer Villa in Svitávka. The author of the adaptations for ‘the house museum’ from the year 1934 was Rudolf Baumfeld (1903-1988) a Jewish Viennese architect. He also, in cooperation with Norbert Schlesinger (1908-1980) designed the impressive villa in the Pisárky neighbourhood of Brno for Fritz’s brother, Ernst, in the year 1935 which is reminiscent of Villa Tugendhat in terms of its fluid arrangement of the living space and its exquisite details. Rudolf Baumfeld was also apparently the author of certain interior adaptations to the Brno Art Nouveau villa of Grete’s father, Alfred Löw-Beer.
The article can be downloaded on the Czech version of our web pages.
Dagmar Černoušková – Iveta Černá, Not Seeing the Trees Because of the Forest. The Other World of the Collector Fritz Löw-Beer. In: Jiří Kroupa, Michaela Šeferisová Loudová, Lubomír Konečný (eds.), ORBIS ARTIUM. On the Anniversary of Lubomír Slavíček, Brno: Masarykova univerzita 2009, pp. 755-765
