A Master Revealed: Otto Neumann at 1515 Lincoln Gallery
By Susan McCalmonT
This fall, 1515 Lincoln Gallery will have the privilege of introducing Oklahoma City to an artist whose work spans more than half a century, yet whose name remains unfamiliar to many contemporary audiences. Otto Neumann was a German painter and master printmaker whose life stretched across two world wars and some of the most transformative movements in 20th-century art. Through it all, one subject remained at the center of his practice: the human figure.
From the anatomical drawings he sold during the First World War to the increasingly abstracted forms of his later years, Neumann spent his career finding new ways to understand the body. Despite the scope of that career, his legacy remains relatively quiet today.
This October 1515 LG has the opportunity to bring renewed attention to his work through a special exhibition from the Estate of Otto Neumann, with many of the pieces coming from an especially dynamic period during the 1950s and 1960s.
It will be Neumann’s Oklahoma City debut and a rare opportunity to experience and purchase work by an artist whose distinct approach to the body deserves more attention.
A Lifelong Exploration of the Human Figure
Neumann’s relationship with art began in an intellectually rich environment. His father, Fritz Neumann, was a professor at the University of Heidelberg, and the people around his family included influential thinkers such as sociologist Max Weber and art historian Carl Neumann.
This early proximity to art, history, and ideas would become important to Neumann, who continually looked backward as he developed his own visual language.
His interest in the human body appeared early in his career. During the First World War, he sold anatomical drawings, which marked the start of a fascination that would continue until the end of his career in 1971. Over time, scientific anatomy gave way to increasingly simplified and abstract forms, but Neumann never completely abandoned the fundamental structure of the human figure.
Sean Ferneau, director of the Otto Neumann Collection, explains, “Neumann’s works on paper from the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s are known for their bold lines, rich colors, and expressive shapes. He focuses on the elegance of the human body in motion and at rest.”
“There is nothing extraneous about Neumann’s work: regardless of what is being depicted, all visual noise is stripped away to reveal forms at their essence,” Ferneau adds.
Neumann’s ability to reduce the figure without losing its humanity is one of the things that initially captivated me about his work. His images can appear remarkably simple, but they’re grounded in a lifetime of looking at the human body and at the artists who interpreted it before him.
How Art History Shaped Neumann’s Visual Language
Although Neumann developed an unmistakably individual style, his work remained deeply connected to art history. In the 1950s, he returned to classical representations of the human figure for inspiration, studying depictions of human life and mythology on ancient Greek drinking vessels and wall friezes. Their economy of line became an important foundation for his own approach.
“This is foundational to Neumann’s work: even after a shift to the abstract in the 1960s, the human form can still be seen in what would otherwise be called non-representational work,” Ferneau explains. “In his work explicitly focusing on the figure; the lines are simple and direct, yet handled with great grace and elegance, recalling the timelessness of this ancient style.”
That dialogue with the past continued throughout Neumann’s career. His work often pays homage to motifs that have appeared across art history, while transforming them through his own abstract vocabulary. Some of the works visitors will encounter at 1515 LG even bring to mind the visual language of Paul Klee.
Interestingly, Neumann’s personality seems to have offered far fewer clues than his art. He was known to be reserved and rigid, revealing little about himself or his work. His friend Gerhard Evers once spent a month with him in 1970 preparing a project that ultimately went unrealized. Evers recalls the experience as something like being an archaeologist forced to draw conclusions from the available material, even though Neumann himself was right there.
Perhaps that makes the works themselves even more important. Neumann left viewers with a visual language to decipher rather than an explanation of what they should see.
Finding Refuge in Art Through Two World Wars
Neumann lived through extraordinary upheaval. His lifetime encompassed both world wars, profound political and social change in Germany, and dramatic shifts within the art world itself.
It can be tempting to look at an artist who lived through such periods and draw direct connections between historical events and individual works. In Neumann’s case, however, Ferneau cautions against making assumptions the historical record cannot support.
“We cannot conclusively tie his wartime experiences to any particular body of work,” he explains. “However, one overarching idea remains true throughout his life: like many creative people, he turned to the studio for refuge from the world around him.”
This offers a different way of understanding the consistency of Neumann’s practice. Although the world around him changed dramatically, as did his own artistic language, he continued returning to the studio and to the human form.
Across decades, styles, mediums, and more the figure became a constant for him, a subject through which Neumann could continue exploring form, movement, simplicity, and what is essential.
From Classical Figures to the Abstraction of the 1960s
The works coming to 1515 LG offer a compelling look at where Neumann’s lifelong investigation eventually led. Most are monotypes produced during the final 25 years of Neumann’s life, with most of the exhibition selections dating to the 1960s. Ferneau describes this as an especially dynamic period in Neumann’s career, when his earlier study of the figure evolved into heavily abstracted forms.
The exhibition also reaches back into the 1950s through works from Neumann’s “Horse & Rider series.” According to Ferneau, these pieces “have been in high demand for decades and are now rare.”
Together, these works allow visitors to see both continuity and transformation. Neumann’s later monotypes are far removed from his earlier pieces, such as his Dante’s Inferno works of the 1930s, but he retains the same subject throughout his career.
In his later works, the body becomes a sleek, decisive arrangement of line, color, and shape. Anatomical detail falls away, leaving an essential impression of human movement and form.
Two Exhibitions, Two Approaches to the Human Figure
The timing of Neumann’s arrival at 1515 LG is especially meaningful as it follows another exhibition centered on a longstanding artistic fascination with the human figure.
This September, the Shanks Family Traditioncelebrates the legacy of realist painter Nelson Shanks through work by his children, Annalisa and Alexander Shanks, alongside fellow Studio Incamminati artist Stephen Bush. Their work is grounded in representational traditions and the close observation of the figure.
Neumann takes that same subject somewhere very different. Where the Shanks tradition approaches the body through realism and techniques artists have passed from one generation to another, Neumann’s later works strip the figure down and push it toward abstraction.
By the 1950s and 1960s, Neumann was exploring possibilities that feel starkly different from traditional figuration while remaining grounded in centuries of artists studying the body.
Placed alongside one another in our fall programming, these exhibitions offer two distinct answers to an enduring artistic question: how can we see and represent the human form?
Bringing Otto Neumann’s Legacy to Oklahoma City
This exhibition would not have been possible without Sean Ferneau and his work with the Otto Neumann Collection.
Ferneau first encountered Neumann’s work in the early 2000s while working with Ann Long Fine Art Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. At a time when Charleston’s art scene was very traditional, he remembers Neumann’s work feeling new and dynamic.
Today, Ferneau works alongside the Rothschild family to preserve and extend Neumann’s legacy. He describes that responsibility not simply in terms of caring for objects but creating relationships around them.
“I think the most important part of extending Neumann’s legacy is the simple act of connection,” he shares. “The Rothschild family and I work together to connect his work with dealers who represent it well; with museums, curators and scholars who appreciate it; with more opportunities for it to be seen by new viewers.”
That spirit of connection is ultimately what brought Neumann to 1515 LG. Ferneau discovered the gallery while researching the region’s art community and approached us about the possibility of representing Neumann’s work. From there, we reviewed his pieces spanning several decades before deciding what this exhibition could become.
Ferneau has been extraordinarily generous with his knowledge throughout the process, and his care for both Neumann’s work and the way it’s presented has been evident at every stage.
When I asked why he chose to work with us, Ferneau replied, “Well, I have a lot of respect for owner and director Susan McCalmont. We collaborated, looking together at several bodies of work over several decades. Ultimately, though, the final images on show in this exhibition are hers. I chose 1515 Lincoln Gallery because I think it is the premier gallery for the visual arts in Oklahoma City.”
I’m incredibly honored by that trust and even more excited about what it allows us to share with our community.
A Rare Opportunity to Rediscover a 20th-Century Master
Otto Neumann’s work is held permanently by more than 30 institutions around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, High Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art in New York. Neumann has been described as one of the most interesting and complex artists of the 20th century, and his work deserves to be encountered by a new generation of viewers.
This October will mark his debut in Oklahoma City. It will also offer something visitors rarely encounter with an exhibition of this caliber: all the works on view will be available for purchase.
For me, the opportunity goes beyond introducing an important 20th-century artist to Oklahoma City. It gives visitors the chance to encounter Neumann’s work as it was meant to be experienced: up close, where the economy of his lines, the movement of his figures, and the evolution of his ideas can be appreciated firsthand.
Ferneau captures what makes that encounter still worth having today: “I believe his work still asks us relevant questions about how we perceive the world around us, and still feels alive and new in this century.”
That ability to feel both rooted in art history and strikingly contemporary is what makes Neumann so compelling. I hope this exhibition introduces his work to a new audience in Oklahoma City and, perhaps, allows some visitors to take a piece of his legacy home with them.
