G.H. Rothe (1935-2007) German/American, Mezzotint Print. Depicts stunning red roses in the foreground with a beautiful valley and lake in the background. Signed bottom right. Numbered 38/200 bottom left. Titled "Rosescape" bottom middle.
Condition: Commensurate with age.
Overall Size: 35 5/8 x 41 in.
Sight Size: 23 x 29 in.
#13 #4048 .
Gatja Helgart Rothe, also known as G.H. Rothe (née Helgart Riedel), was born on March 15th, 1935 to Elizabeth and Harry Riedel in Beuthen, in German Silesia. During World War II her father served in the army. After the War Silesia was ceded to Poland, and the family was finally reunited in Wiedenbrück, West Germany in 1947. Her father built a goldsmith studio at their house and Riedel became an apprentice in her father’s workshop, where the task of drawing flowers in gold leaf began to develop her artistic skills and passion. In 1956 Riedel hitchhiked to southern Germany to visit her brother, who was studying design at the Art Academy in Pforzheim. She enrolled in painting and drawing classes there, and in 1958 she married Curt Rothe, a painting professor and post-impressionist artist. Their son Peter was born in 1959, and it was during her pregnancy that she first developed works that explored the intimacies of bodies which she called “anatomy landscapes.” She received her first solo show in 1967, and in 1968 she was awarded the Villa Romana Prize for emerging German artists and traveled with her son to Florence, Italy. Rothe had a series of shows in Montevideo, Spain facilitated by a gallery owner and curator who eventually became her lover. After she left Peter with his father at their estate in southern Germany, the lovers traveled in a van around South America for nine months. Rothe then returned with her lover to Montevideo to help him with treatment for alcoholism. She left Europe in 1971 and moved to New York City, where she began painting landscapes and skylines with explorations of layering, creating compositional narratives out of her experiences in the city. She started attending the ballet and expanded her interest in the body into studies of dancers in movement. She delved into different printmaking techniques, developing a fascination with transparencies and eventually known as one of the best mezzotint artists in the country. A friend in New York gave her the nickname Gatja, which she adopted in signing most of her work. Believing that people would take her more seriously if they assumed she was a man, she decided to use the initials G. H. and her last name. In 1973 Curt died, and her son Peter moved in with her. At the time she was designing jewelry for Tiffany’s and other jewelers, and by 1978 she was listed in both Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who in America. That same year Rothe traveled to Los Angeles to visit Maurie Symonds, who owned several galleries in California showing her work, and became fascinated with nearby Carmel-by-the-Sea. She decided to move there with him, although she kept a storage space and a studio in New York. Throughout the 1980s and 90s Rothe had about ten large shows each year in different U.S. cities, and her son Peter regularly presented her work at Art Basel. In 2000, after dealing with a series of drawn-out lawsuits and selling off all her assets in America, Rothe moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where she painted mountain landscapes, horses, portraits, and other scenes inspired by her surroundings. In 2003 Rothe was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she died on August 3rd, 2007. In addition to her enormous and highly appreciated body of work exhibited in her lifetime, her son Peter discovered hundreds of tempera works depicting sex and intimacy between aging couples which she never revealed to anyone, as well as dozens of graffitied panels she had acquired from abandoned homes around Brooklyn and reworked with painting and gold leaf.
Condition
Commensurate with age.
