Publishing imprint founded in 1910 by musician, composer, writer, and editor Herwarth Walden (pseudonym for Georg Levin) to publish the periodical Der Sturm, an inexpensive, mass-produced newspaper promoting avant-garde art, literature, music, and cultural critique. Originally issued weekly, later less frequently. Last issue (vol. 21) published 1932. First issues included reproductions of drawings by Oskar Kokoschka and Brücke artists Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Max Pechstein, among others; from July 1911 on featured original prints (woodcuts mostly) in some numbers, first by Brücke artists, later by other individuals and Blaue Reiter artists. In 1912 Walden opened a gallery of the same name to exhibit artists associated with the periodical; began to issue prints published in the periodical in separate hand-printed and signed editions, though more affordable reproductions were also often for sale. Gallery hosted more than 170 exhibitions over its 17-year existence, including the Erster deutscher Herbstsalon (First German autumn salon), a huge international survey of contemporary art emphasizing Futurists, Cubists, and artists of the Blaue Reiter in 1913. Fostered cosmopolitan, international network of artists, writers, and intellectuals, simultaneously introducing the major European avant-garde trends to Berlin and serving as a central force in defining and disseminating German Expressionist art and literature. Embracing Communism in the postwar period, Walden moved to the Soviet Union in 1932, where he died in 1941, a victim of Stalinism.

Selected Bibliography

Pirsich, Volker. Der Sturm: Eine Monographie. Herzberg, Germany: Bautz, 1985.