I rush into your Heaven with all the Power of Love
Love letters by Max Schwimmer

22. November 2025 — 24. January 2026

To celebrate the 130th birthday of Leipzig painter Max Schwimmer, we are exhibiting for the first time a selection of the most beautiful love letters he wrote to Gerdine, young lover. In addition to these 67 letters from the 1930s, the exhibition also presents several oil paintings and watercolours that showcase the artist's work from around the same period in larger formats.

  • Max Schwimmer – „Ostseehafen mit Windmühle“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Badende im Mondschein“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Sitzender Akt“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Mädchen auf dem Kanapee“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Akt mit drei Hasen“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Am Golf von Neapel (Sorrent)“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Halbakt mit Blume im Haar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Sitzender Akt“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Blumenstrauß mit Mädchenkopf“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Rückenakt mit Blumen“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Akt im Blumenbett“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Leda mit dem Schwan“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Am Fenster“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Stillleben mit Opernglas und Fächer“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Bucht am Kurischen Haff“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Zwei Segelboote und Akt mit Katze“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liebespaar unterm Baum“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Maler mit Modell“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Paar in Abendgarderobe“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Landschaft in Mainfranken“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Rückenakt mit Liebhaber“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liegendes Liebespaar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Stehender Akt“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Auf dem Sofa (Gerdine)“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Kleiner Hafen in der Bucht“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Familie“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liebkosung“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Zärtliche Liebkosung“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Paar im Liebesspiel“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Akt in der Badewanne“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Erotische Szene“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Und trinke Dein helles Frühlingsblut“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liebesszene (Lüpf den Hintern)“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liebespaar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Zärtliches Liebespaar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Bildnis Hans Georg Richter“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Im Bett“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Sinnendes Mädchen (Gerdine)“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Gerdine im weißen Rock“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Gerdine vom Rücken“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Gerdine mit Hündchen-Mann“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Rote Astern“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Sommersanfang“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Enten im Wasser“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Dame mit Blumenvase“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liebespaar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Halbakt, vom Rücken gesehen“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Stehendes Liebespaar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Gruppe (Kind, Mädchen und Frau)“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Obstschale mit Weinkaraffe“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Stürmische Umarmung“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Junge Dame mit Hut“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Zärtliches Liebesspiel“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Verzweifelter Künstler“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Fohlen, Kalb und Hühner“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Araber“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Liebespaar, artistisch“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Mädchen in orientalischem Kostüm“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Verkehrsunfall mit Chinesen (Automobil und Rikscha)“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Badendes Paar“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Der Schläfer“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Dame mit Turban am Tisch“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Akt und Muschel im Meer“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Kauernder Akt, heimlich liebkost“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Dame in rosafarbenem Sessel“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Aktmodell im Atelier“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Rückenakt“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Aufständiger“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Gerdine im Königsmantel“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Weißt Du auch wer ich Dir bin?“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Gerdine zeigt den Berliner Rübärschen die kalte Schulter“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Vielleicht, daß meine Demut Dich erbarmt“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Trompeter auf der Chaiselongue“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Reformationsbrötchen mit Engel“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Das Atelier ist in Ordnung“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Katze, Stuhl und Aktmedaillon“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Tierstudien und anderes“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Halbakt mit blauer Mütze“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Telefonat mit Weihnachtsengeln“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Akt mit erhobenem Arm“
  • Max Schwimmer – „Maler bei Kerzenschein“
Max Schwimmer

Max Schwimmer

As a painter and illustrator, Max Schwimmer reveals a unique erotic sensualism, whose foremost means of expression are an explicit colourism and the subtle elegance of his drawing style. After late expressionistic beginnings, he developed his painting in the 1920s under the influence of the Fauvism of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, mediated by his teacher Hans Purrmann, into bright, joyful tonal colours. As a draughtsman, he remained devoted to the German Impressionist Max Slevogt throughout his life, even if the strong experience of Max Beckmann's painting almost turned him away after 1945 and led to metaphorical compression.

Details

Introduction

Between 1936 and 1940, a difficult period of deprivation for Max Schwimmer both personally and artistically, the artist wrote letters almost daily from Leipzig to Berin to his much younger lover »Gerdine«. The young photographer Gerda Schimpf was studying in various studios there, while he was trying to establish himself as a book designer and illustrator, among other things, after losing his professorship at the Leipzig Art Academy and without the former opportunities to exhibit or publish.

Schwimmer's artist letters are widely known for their ingenuity and their sometimes enchanting linguistic, pictorial and overall aesthetic effect. The love letters to Gerdine are particularly appealing within this group of works. On the one hand, because of their abundance, as there are over 500 of these unique letters in the large collections in the Academy of Arts in Berlin, the Leipzig City Library and our gallery's inventory. On the other hand, because he accompanied his declarations of love for this young woman with extraordinarily beautiful drawings and watercolours, most of which are highly sensual and often very erotic in nature.

The artist varies (...) the traditional motif of »Leda and the Swan«. His figure of Leda does not appear as a seduced heroine, but as a quietly pensive young woman in whom the features of his beloved shine through; here, the myth serves as a projection surface and a space for expectations. In this interpretation, the swan, as Schwimmer's alter ego, loses any divine fantasy of omnipotence. (...) A free, swinging chalk stroke conveys the impression of immediacy in this, as well as in the other studies, vignettes and sensually light aperçus in chalk, graphite or ink. Contours are only hinted at, the forms remain in the process of becoming: lines circle, break off, start again and create a tension between spontaneity and graphic confidence. Over this lies a transparent touch of watercolour. Delicate shades of flesh, violet and rose, accentuated here and there by blue, appear less coloured than atmospherically modulated. (...) The letters that Max Schwimmer wrote to Gerda Schimpf between 1936 and 1940 are not only written testimonies of a passionate relationship, but also small works of art in their own right. The female nude is almost always at the centre of the watercolour drawings. As part of an abbreviated landscape or interior, Schwimmer condenses his imagination into scenes that express his longings and amorous offers with quick, vibrant strokes. As a lascivious ideal, the beloved lolls in an erotically charged pose like a Rococo beauty by François Boucher in her soft, rumpled sheets, or is pleasured by the artist himself in lovemaking. At times, »Gerdine« also appears ironically and humorously as a resolute and demanding model, or lets the lovesick man fidget on a long leash like a »puppy dog«.
Katharina Arlt
Sinnlichkeit als Bedingung des Schöpferischen. Liebesbriefe von Max Schwimmer in der Galerie Himmel, in: SAX, Ausgabe Januar 2026, S. 30/31
To mark the 130th birthday of Leipzig painter Max Schwimmer (1895-1960), Galerie Himmel is exhibiting for the first time a selection of previously unknown love letters that the artist wrote – often accompanied by delicate drawings – to his youthful lover »Gerdine«, who later became the photographer Gerda Schimpf. (...) They are romantic, cheerfully sensual and frivolous, with highly erotic drawings of the two making love, drawn in delicate pastel tones with feather-light strokes.
Lilli Vostry
Liebesbriefe von Max Schwimmer in der Galerie Himmel. Schwärmerei und Zeichenkunst, in: Chemnitzer Morgenpost vom 5.12.2025