The painter, collector, and arts advocate August Deusser helped to blaze the trail for nascent Modernism in the Rhineland. Becoming known on the French avant-garde art scene early on, he began advocating for the renewal of painting in early twentieth-century Germany, as the founder of secessionist art associations. He and Julius Bretz, Max Clarenbach, Walter Ophey, and Wilhelm Schmurr founded the Sonderbund ("special alliance") in Düsseldorf, whose exhibitions created a furor. As a painter, he had a fondness for motifs of horses or riders; later, he turned to realistically oriented landscapes and portrait painting. The catalogue shows August Deusser's development as an artist, with a focus on the years 1908 to 1912, which were of particular importance to the painter and arts advocate. Besides essays, the volume also contains reproductions of works by the co-founders of the Sonderbund.

After apprenticing as a decorative painter, August Deusser (1870-1942) studied at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, where he also held a special professorship from 1917-24. His marriage to the painter Elisabeth Eugenie Albert made him financially independent, enabling him to take up arts advocacy.