The McMaster Museum of Art is delighted to have acquired several works by Robert Langstadt (Canadian, born Germany, 1912-1987), including a watercolour of Hamilton. The painting is a gift of the artist’s wife, sculptor Anne Kahane. She has also generously given the Museum five woodcuts which were exhibited in Langstadt’s solo exhibition at McMaster in 1982.

Born in Bavaria, Robert Langstadt studied art, design, typography, and art history in Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, and Florence. He lived for a period with the family of Max Pechstein, one of the members of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke and his early associations had a profound influence on his art.

Langstadt emigrated to Canada in 1942, was interned in the Eastern Townships for the duration of the World War II, and settled in Montreal in 1950. He was the art director of a firm in Montreal and taught studio art at both McGill and Concordia Universities. He exhibited extensively and his work is in many private and public collections throughout Canada such as the Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

In 1980 he moved to Hamilton, with his wife Anne Kahane, where he wrote art critiques for the local newspapers. Until his death in 1987 he continued working on his woodcuts and paintings, producing numerous views of his adopted city of Hamilton, especially his favourite vistas taken from the escarpment.

– Excerpts from 2015 Appraisal Report by Joyce Millar.