Memories of the artists' colony

Created: 03/09/2022, 11:02 am

The little house on the Römerstraße is history: Ottilie Kasper, winner of the Klinge prize, once lived here, part of what used to be a very lively artist colony in Gauting.

© Andrea Jaksch

With the demolition, a piece of local history disappears: the home of Ottilie Kasper, winner of the Klinge prize, who died in 2009, is being replaced by a new building.

Nana Tatum-Kováts from the artist family Kováts, who was friends with her, remembers the times of a lively artist colony in Gauting.

Gauting

– All that is left of the house of Ottilie Kasper, winner of the Blade Culture Prize and painter, is rubble.

Die Gautingern died in 2009 at the age of 104.

The painter, affectionately known as “Odi” Kasper, had her small house with a studio on Römerstrasse in Gauting.

Nana Tatum-Kováts went in and out there as a child.

The 82-year-old from Gautingen, who is an artist herself, recalls that her parents were close friends with Ottilie Kaspar.

My father painted a large mural on plaster for the facade of the house about six decades ago, says the daughter of the well-known Hungarian sculptor and painter Georg von Kovats (1912-1997).

The colored mural showed a standing lady with a basket over her head.

Since the painting could not be preserved when it was demolished, Nana Tatum-Kováts asked the Gautingen photographer Christoph Ramm

The two artist families of Kováts and Kasper were linked by a lifelong friendship.

Sculptor Georg von Kováts, his wife Dorothea and the artist couple Ottilie and Ludwig Kasper lived in the legendary studio community “Klosterstraße”, a free island with the famous Käthe Kollwitz in National Socialist Berlin.

From 1958 Georg von Kováts lived and worked in Darmstadt.

The sculpture "Nereid III." at Gautinger Pippinplatz comes from the sculptor who died in 1997.

After the Second World War, Nana Tatum-Kováts lived with her parents in a kind of shed next to the house of her uncle Joachim Schacht.

The artist couple von Kováts also formed a close friendship with the Gautingen painters Hans Olde and Lulu Beck.

Ottilie Kasper moved to Gauting in 1945 after the sudden death of her husband, the well-known Berlin sculptor Ludwig Kasper.

In 1952 she moved into her then newly built small house on Römerstraße.

Georg Kováts worked there in a small annex.

She herself regularly visited Ottilie Kasper there.

In 2002, the Gautinger sculptress, who was known for her impressive portrait paintings, was honored with the Gautinger Klinge Culture Prize.

Until the end of her life.

Odi Kasper lived in the small house until the end of her life.

Nana Tatum-Kovát's mother, who also died of old age at the age of 103, regularly visited her friend there.

Ottilie Kasper died childless.

Her grandnephew inherited the house.

The demolition excavators rolled in on Ash Wednesday and Nana Tatum-Kováts looks back with longing.

"An old piece of the former artist colony Gauting is disappearing again," says the artist, known for her walking stick installations, somewhat wistfully.

The property was obviously sold and is now being redeveloped after demolition.