Henry (Heinz) Emil Salloch “Olde Sealfen” 1952 Original Watercolor – American Small-Town Street Scene

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Original 1952 watercolor by Emil Heinz, depicting a quiet mid-century American street lined with weathered storefronts and telephone poles. The … Read more Original 1952 watercolor by Emil Heinz, depicting a quiet mid-century American street lined with weathered storefronts and telephone poles. The scene centers on the “Olde Sealfen C. A. Rackliff” building beside a vintage gas pump, rendered in Heinz’s fluid ink outline and transparent color washes.Signed and dated lower right, 7-4-1952. Framed under glass in a simple oak frame. A strong example of post-war American regional watercolor work, combining nostalgia with modernist line precision.

Henry Salloch was a German-born artist and graphic designer from Berlin who emigrated to the U.S. to escape Fascism in 1937. Born Heinz Emil Salloch, he studied art at the Muthesius School of Applied Arts in Kiel, Germany. In 1929, he returned to Berlin, where he worked as a teacher.

Unwilling to join the Nazi Party in 1936, the only work he could get was as a substitute teacher in Silesia, where he soon aroused the annoyance of the local chapter of the party when he invited three Jewish children to a Christmas party and had also not - as required -- used a Nationalist observer in his classroom. When his landlady warned him that the Gestapo had inquired about him, he fled the country.

In Germany, his paintings and drawings consisted mainly of Modernist landscapes in a pared-down abstracted style apparently influenced by Cubism and the Blaue Reiter movement: harbor scenes of Kiel, mountain villages, the steel arches of Berlin, dark towers, and churches.

After settling in the U.S., he supported himself as a commercial artist in New York. There he met his wife, Erika Salloch, a fellow refugee who later became a professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, which is where he was living when he died.

The Thunderbird Foundation will be showing certain material produced in New Mexico and Arizona during the 1950's. There was a museum show at the Ostholstein-Museum Eutin in 2008. See less