Images & Texts

PRESS RELEASE

KOLLWITZ

20 MARCH TO 9 JUNE 2024
Exhibition annex

She was the most famous German woman artist of the twentieth century and nevertheless an exceptional phenomenon: Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945). This spring the Städel Museum is devoting a major exhibition to her with a focus on the versatility, modernity and explosive power of her oeuvre. As an artist, Kollwitz followed paths of her own: She devoted herself not to painting, but above all printmaking and drawing—a decision as bold as it was determined— and there found her way to an independent pictorial language distinguished by incisive immediacy. In the hope of influencing society with her art, she explored existential human questions from a new perspective, also addressing troublesome topics. Not least of all for that reason, the artist and her work were politically instrumentalized in Germany after 1945—a reception still impacting our collective conception of her to this day.

This complex history of Käthe Kollwitz’s public reception as well as the Städel Museum’s own extensive holdings, enhanced by works from leading museums and private collections, form the point of departure for the exhibition. More than 110 striking works on paper, sculptures, and early paintings by the artist will be on view, including outstanding loans from the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and elsewhere. These works will bear trenchant witness to Kollwitz’s decision in favour of graphic art as well as her nonconformity and love for experimentation. They will reveal the special nature of her themes, her formal vocabulary and her compositional dramaturgy. The show will moreover explore the charged relationship between aesthetics and politics in her oeuvre. Finally, an overview of how the artist was assessed on both sides of the inner-German border after 1945 will serve as a reflection on the power of cultural-political narratives.

Städel Museum director Philipp Demandt on the exhibition: “Apart from Käthe Kollwitz there is presumably no artist in Germany who attained as early and enduring a career with as much autonomy and determination. Her work made an impact as far afield as the U.S. and China—and was instrumentalized by many isms, both social and political, especially in post-war Germany. It accordingly appears all the more urgent to shed light on the German ‘Kollwitz myth’ and take an in-depth look at the lifework of this prominent woman artist of Classical Modernism. Especially our institution is called upon to undertake such a project: After all, the Städel Museum was already acquiring the art of Käthe Kollwitz during her lifetime, and since the purchase of the Goedeckemeyer Collection by the City of Frankfurt in 1964 has had a well-founded collection, above all of her works in the printmaking medium, to call its own. Awaiting our visitors this spring is an encounter with an artist whose oeuvre has lost nothing of its topicality to this day.”

Regina Freyberger, head of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings from 1800 and curator of the exhibition: “It is a huge challenge to remain completely unbiased because, consciously or unconsciously, we always carry our own conceptions and experiences with us. This is especially true with regard to an artist like Kollwitz who—thanks to school and street names, postage stamps and reproductions of her works—has been part of our everyday life for decades. That circumstance can easily obscure the fact that she was one of the most exceptional phenomena of Classical Modernist art. The work of Kollwitz is distinguished by unconventionality, a love for experimentation, and extraordinary persistence. Her refusal to produce art merely for her own sake led to her radical decision to work primarily in the graphic medium. She chose anti-bourgeois and ultimately also political issues and explored them artistically from new angles in an emphatic pictorial language that is today as gripping as ever. Like all great art, her art is timeless and timelessly relevant.”

Curator: Dr Regina Freyberger (Head of the Department of Prints and Drawings from 1800, Städel Museum)
Sponsored by: DZ BANK, Gemeinnützige Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain GmbH, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V. with the Städelfreunde 1815
With additional support from: Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung, Wolfgang Ratjen Stiftung, Aventis Foundation
Media partners: Süddeutsche Zeitung, ARTE, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main

The detailed press information can be found here.

PRESS RELEASE
ANNIVERSARY BEQUEST: OUTSTANDING PRIVATE COLLECTION OF WORKS BY HONORÉ DAUMIER IN THE STÄDEL MUSEUM
SBEQUEST MARKS THE 125TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE STÄDELSCHER MUSEUMS-VEREIN / HONORÉ DAUMIER. THE HELLWIG COLLECTION – EXHIBITION STARTS 24 JANUARY IN THE STÄDEL MUSEUM

Starting 24 January 2024, the Städel Museum presents an exhibition of works by the French artist Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) to mark the 125th anniversary of the Städelscher Museums-Verein. The works are part of the outstanding private collection belonging to the Frankfurt patron of the arts, Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, that constitutes one of the most distinguished collections of Daumier outside France. The collection comprises a total of 4,200 lithographs and wood engravings, 19 drawings, 2 paintings and 36 bronze sculptures – many of which have never been publicly exhibited. Mirroring the full scope of Honoré Daumier’s artistic oeuvre, the private collection impresses with its unique quality. With the Städel Museum’s presentation of a selection of around 120 works from the Hellwig Collection, these works will be on view to the general public for the first time. The collection is to be donated in its entirety to the Städelscher Museums-Verein as an anniversary bequest, which in turn will entrust it as a permanent loan to the Städel Museum, where the collection will be preserved, researched and presented.
Honoré Daumier was one of France’s greatest draughtsmen. As a keen observer and controversial contemporary critic, he made a name for himself in the political circles of 19-th-century Paris, primarily through his caricatures which he produced for the illustrated periodicals La Caricature and Le Charivari. Both feared and loved, Daumier became the conscience of an epoch marked by radical social and political upheaval and profound change. His commitment to republican and liberal ideas, to the press and freedom of speech, his fervent interest in modern innovations and his critical, but also profoundly human view of the conditions of his time are impressively manifested in the exhibited works. The exhibition in the Städel Museum is sponsored by the Städelscher Museums-Verein.

Director of the Städel Museum, Philipp Demandt, on the patron of the arts Hans-Jürgen Hellwig and on the significance of this bequest for the Städel Museum: “Hans-Jürgen Hellwig is a collector par excellence: passionate, persistent, enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable. We are delighted to present a selection of some 120 works from his outstanding Daumier collection here at the Städel Museum as our first exhibition of the new year. It is a show that offers sensual pleasure to all viewers, sharpens the mind and invites visitors to engage with the fundamental questions of our own time. As an anniversary gift to the Städelscher Museums-Verein and now on permanent loan to us, the Hellwig Collection is an invaluable addition to our own collection. As a result, the Städel Museum will permanently be established as one of the most significant centres of Daumier research in Germany. My heartfelt thanks go to Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, who through his work on the board of our museum’s association has for decades furthered the interests of the Städel Museum. With his exceptionally generous bequest, he has inscribed his name into the history of patronage for the Städel, which began with its founder Johann Friedrich Städel and has continued to this day in a variety of ways. It is through such commitment by the people of our city that this museum is sustained.”

The collector, Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, on the bequest: “A question that preoccupies many collectors is what will eventually become of their collection. For me, this question has never really arisen. In my more than sixty years of collecting, I have collected art for its own sake and not as an investment. And during the over half a century that I have been living in Frankfurt, I have personally incorporated the great tradition of this place: that its citizens see the cultural and social institutions of their city not only as a public responsibility, but also as their own. Margret Stuffmann, former Head of the Prints and Drawings Collection at the Städel Museum, accompanied me as a private collector with her expertise in 19th century French art. For considerable time, I had seen Honoré Daumier only as a caricaturist of political events. It was she who opened my eyes to the artist Daumier: to his artistic qualities, which lie in every single lithograph; to the spectrum of his work, which encompasses all themes of human existence; and to his rich knowledge of history and art. So it is also in gratitude for this that my collection is being passed on to the Städel Museum – as a bequest in my lifetime to the Städelscher Museums-Verein.”

Sylvia von Metzler, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V. on the anniversary and the bequest: “This year, the Städelscher Museums-Verein is celebrating its 125th anniversary, hence also 125 years of commitment to the Städel Museum by Frankfurt’s citizens. Since its foundation on 27 June 1899, our first concern as a museum association has been to facilitate the Städel Museum in consolidating and expanding its collection – and, in addition, in important research projects or large-scale special exhibitions. For over thirty years, our board member Hans-Jürgen Hellwig has rendered outstanding services to the Städelscher Museums-Verein: with the commitment he has shown both to Frankfurt and to the Städel Museum, he continues to emphasise the value of individual civic engagement for the cohesion of society. We owe this exhibition and, above all, this unique bequest to his generosity. His impressive Daumier collection will now become the property of the Städelscher Museums-Verein Foundation on the occasion of our association’s anniversary, to be housed and preserved in the Städel Museum. A truly splendid occasion to celebrate!”

You can download the complete press release as a PDF here.

PRESS RELEASE

2024 EXHIBITION PREVIEW

ONE-OF-A-KIND WORKS BY HONORÉ DAUMIER FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, A MAJOR KOLLWITZ EXHIBITION STARTING IN MARCH, CONTEMPORARY ART BY MUNTEAN/ROSENBLUM, SUMMER WITH THE STÄDEL / WOMEN, EXCEPTIONAL PORTRAIT ART BY REMBRANDT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES, ITALIAN BAROQUE DRAWINGS DURING THE BOOK FAIR, PORTRAIT PHOTOS BY RINEKE DIJKSTRA

Titles and exhibition dates are subject to change.

You can find the complete press release as PDF here.

PRESS RELEASE

1 DECEMBER 2023 TO 14 APRIL 2024
Contemporary Art Collection

The Romanian-German artist Miron Schmückle (b. in Sibiu/Hermannstadt in 1966) is among the singular protagonists of contemporary art. Growing up in Romania under Ceaușescu, already as a child he dreamt himself away to other worlds—worlds that, on the far side of the Iron Curtain, seemed forever inaccessible. From an early age, he took a keen interest in art history on the one hand and the flora and fauna of faraway places on the other. Together they led to a uniquely coherent oeuvre. From 1 December 2023 to 14 April 2024, the Städel Museum is presenting a solo exhibition featuring 28 works by Miron Schmückle, including newly executed works never before on view to the public.

Associated with the idea of the jungle or primeval forest from the outset, Schmückle’s visual cosmos oscillates between fine-painterly hyperrealism and undisguised escapism, between the precise observation of nature and an exuberant imagination. The virtually botanical approach of his depictions belies the fact that his complex creations originate not in nature but in fantasy. Based on his understanding and observations of nature with its widely differing colours, forms, and surface textures, they bear a relation to florilegia and exhibit similarities to Renaissance and Baroque plant and still-life painting of the kind once collected in cabinets of art and curiosities.

With the series Cosmic Attractors (2023) carried out especially for the exhibition Flesh for Fantasy, the artist invites the visitors to partake of the spatial and temporal complexity of his floral figments of the imagination, which in his conception are three-dimensional. By arranging different large-scale views and visual manifestations of one and the same plant composition in space, he creates an installation in which viewers can literally witness the plants’ growth.

Curator: Dr Philipp Demandt (Director, Städel Museum)

Download the complete press release here.

PRESS RELEASE

HOLBEIN AND THE RENAISSANCE IN THE NORTH

2 NOVEMBER 2023 TO 18 FEBRUARY 2024
Exhibition annex
Press preview: Tuesday, 31 October 2023, 11.00 am

It was a turning point in the history of art: Renaissance painting. What had begun in Italy developed into something completely new in Northern Europe in the works of the painters Hans Holbein the Elder (ca. 1464–1524) and Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531), pioneers of this singular art. Its centre was the free imperial and mercantile city of Augsburg, which became the capital of a German—but also an international—Renaissance within just a few decades. None other than Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), one of the German Renaissance’s greatest painters, would ultimately make this art known throughout Europe. From 2 November 2023 to 18 February 2024, the Städel Museum is devoting an exhibition to this fascinating art-historical epoch. For the first time, it will bring together the most important paintings, drawings and prints of Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair in a presentation further enhanced by works of other Augsburg artists of the period from around 1480 to 1530 as well as prominent works by their colleagues active elsewhere in Germany and in Italy and the Netherlands. Masters such as Albrecht Dürer, Donatello, Jan van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes had a lasting impact on the art of Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair. Uniting some 180 important works from leading international museum collections, the show will offer an overview of the various stylistic particularities of Northern Renaissance painting. A highlight of the Frankfurt show will be the presentation of the two masterworks by Hans Holbein the Younger: The Madonna of Mayor Jacob Meyer zum Hasen (1526–1528) from the Würth Collection and the Solothurn Madonna (1522) from the Kunstmuseum Solothurn.
 
Städel director Philipp Demandt on the exhibition: “The Städel Museum is prized far and wide for its major Old Masters exhibitions. After Rubens, Rembrandt and Reni, it now holds yet another exceptional show in store for the public. The Städel Museum is presenting the Renaissance in the North—a new and entirely unique style of painting that originated more than 500 years ago in the North of Europe at the threshold from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. We are celebrating the great German painters of the Renaissance and their forerunners in an exhibition featuring some 180 prominent artworks from the world’s leading museum collections. Famous paintings by Hans Holbein the Elder, Hans Burgkmair and Holbein the Younger will enter into dialogue with examples by Albrecht Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Donatello and many others. One of the show’s key objects will be the Madonna by Holbein the Younger from the Würth Collection, a painting regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of the German Renaissance. Its presentation along with the Madonna from the Kunstmuseum Solothurn in Frankfurt is a chance not to be missed.”

“Around 1500, Augsburg was one of the leading art centres north of the Alps. Among the artists of this period, the colleagues and rivals Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair the Elder were especially prominent. Representing the range of stylistic possibilities encompassed by Northern Renaissance painting, their works would come to influence entire generations of later artists, as we see in the paintings of Holbein the Younger. His exploration of the art of Augsburg was groundbreaking to a degree strikingly mirrored in his early work. In less than ten years, Holbein the Younger developed an unmistakable style of his own and thus attained his rank as one of the sixteenth century’s most prominent European artists”, explains Jochen Sander, curator of the exhibition, Deputy Director and Head of the Collection of German, Dutch and Flemish Art before 1800 at the Städel Museum.

CURATOR STÄDEL MUSEUM: Prof Dr Jochen Sander (Städel Museum, Deputy Director and Head of the Collection of German, Dutch and Flemish Painting before 1800)
EXHIBITION DATES 2 November 2023 to 18 February 2024
PRESS PREVIEW: Tuesday, 31 October 2023, 11.00 am
SPONSORED BY: Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe mit Deutsche Leasing AG, Frankfurter Sparkasse & Sparkassen-Kulturfonds des Deutschen Sparkassen- & Giroverbandes; Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V., Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung

The detailed press information can be found here.

PRESS RELEASE
14 OCTOBER 2023 TO 4 FEBRUARY 2024
Old Masters Collection
Press Preview: Friday, 13 October 2023, 9.30 am

The Romanian artist Victor Man (*1974) has for years been considered one of the most sought-after and at the same time rarest protagonists of contemporary art. His intimate paintings, which seem to have fallen out of time, elude immediate interpretation. In the midst of the Old Masters Collection, the Städel Museum presents an exhibition from 14 October 2023 to 4 February 2024, featuring twenty works by the painter from the last ten years, dedicated to his artistic focus: portraits. In deep dark green, blue, and black, Man creates portraits as sensitive as they are enigmatic, dominated by an existentialist, sombre, and introspective tone. Subtle influences of the pre-Renaissance, dense with metaphors, emerge in his melancholic imagery. Stylistically complex and difficult to categorize, his inimitable oeuvre reveals numerous art historical references while at the same time representing a unique position in contemporary painting. At the Städel Museum, a fascinating dialogue between history and the present emerges.

The title of the exhibition, The Lines of Life, is a quote from Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem To Zimmer (1812) and refers to Victor Man’s close connection to poetry and literature. These references, as well as connections to his own life reality, are repeatedly found in his painting – for example, the individuals depicted in the portraits in the main part of the exhibition come from his family environment and circle of friends. Immersed in predominantly dark scenarios and with a contemplative gaze, the sitters are enveloped in existential heaviness. The paintings bear witness to an intense exploration of human existence and speak of the poetic as well as tragic ambivalence of life. In the second part of the exhibition, the genre of portraiture is continued and at the same time deconstructed with the series The Chandler (since 2013). Victor Man presents the same motif in various paintings, always in a slightly different form – a seated figure with a head on its lap – and invites us to explore our own perception. The Städel Museum brings together all the works from this series, which has rarely been seen in its entirety – including the latest work, which has never been shown before.

“As a museum of pictures, the Städel is the perfect place for the first institutional solo exhibition of Victor Man’s works in Germany in almost a decade. Man’s oeuvre is committed to painting. Surrounded by the collection, which spans 700 years, his paintings open a dialogue anchored in the richness of art history. The quiet and timeless portraits appear as an antithesis to our highly technological and complex living environment. Let us see them as an invitation to embark on a quest for the essence of our own existence”, says Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

Svenja Grosser, curator of the exhibition, further elaborates: “Victor Man’s work is timeless, and his paintings thus resist art-historical classification according to criteria such as style, date of execution, or even the period to which they belong. Multi-layered references from art history and literature also open up a wide range of possible interpretations. However, one thing is always at the center: Victor Man’s entire oeuvre revolves around painting itself and its inherent possibilities to put us as viewers to the test.”

Curator: Svenja Grosser (Deputy Head of the Collection of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum)
Project Coordinator: Maja Lisewski (assistant curator, Collection of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum)
The exhibition is supported by: Deutsche Bank, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.

Download the complete press release here.

PRESS RELEASE
‘SELF & PORTRAIT’ – NEW CLOSE UP IN THE COLLECTION OF CONTEMPORARY ART
DIGITAL APPLICATION IN THE MUSEUM AND AT HOME // GUIDED TOURS

Artists have been preoccupied with the human image since antiquity: under the title ‘Self & Portrait’, the new CLOSE UP is dedicated to an examination of the perception of the self in art. Four works by Maria Lassnig (1919–2014), Francis Bacon (1909–1992), Jonathan Meese (b. 1970), and Gabriele Stötzer (b. 1953) from the collection of the Städel Museum show how artistically diverse the preoccupation with the self can be. With sensitivity, playfulness, and abstraction, they explore the question of who or what the self actually is. Between an inside and outside view, artistic skills, external features, and the underlying selfimage become visible to the viewer in the (self-) portrait. The works of art on display focus on the exploration of the self, the analysis of social role models, and the sounding out of the artistic representability of the self. The artists selected represent different positions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. CLOSE UP is exactly that – a closer take on a core theme in the Städel’s collection of contemporary art, as an on-site art and mediation space and as a digital application. In the museum, CLOSE UP offers greater access and opportunities for in-depth research with a concentrated selection of works and relies on the interplay of original works of art, wall texts, and a digital application. Through various research possibilities, visitors can engage intensively and interactively with the theme of ‘Self & Portrait’ and thereby develop their visual skills and information literacy.

‘“Me, Myself, and I” – in the new presentation of CLOSE UP, we focus on the artistic exploration of the self. Who am I? What do I want? How do I present myself to others? Presenting oneself in the right light is ubiquitous through social media, yet it is not a phenomenon that only emerged in the twenty-first century, not even in art. The works of the selected artists impressively show how artistically diverse the preoccupation with one’s own self-image can be. With the digital application and further possibilities for in-depth research, visitors can use CLOSE UP to independently explore broader contexts and discover interesting facts,’ explain the two project managers Anne Dribbisch (Education and Mediation) and Maja Lisewski (Collection of Contemporary Art).

Project management and concept: Anne Dribbisch (Städel Museum, Research Assistant, Education and Mediation) and Maja Lisewski (Städel Museum, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art)
Digital support: Alexandra Reißer (Städel Museum, Project Manager, Digital Culture)
URL of the digital application: https://closeup.staedelmuseum.de/selbstundportraet/en/

You can download the complete press release as a PDF here.

PRESS RELEASE
UGO RONDINONE. SUNRISE. EAST.
EXTENDED UNTIL 9 JUNE 2024
Städel Garden

This summer, grotesque creatures will welcome visitors to the Städel Garden. The Swiss conceptual and installation artist Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964) transforms the prominent hill above the Garden Halls into a strange landscape. For his group of works sunrise. east., Rondinone assigned a head with characteristic, highly reduced facial features to represent each calendar month. Larger than life and cast in shiny silver aluminium, the massive, two-metre-high sculptural heads are reduced to their facial expressions: With mouths agape, they gaze from small eyes, from friendly and naïve to sceptical, from surprised to eerie. They evoke a wide range of associations, from ritual masks and ghosts to the visual language of comics, emoticons, and memes. Visitors to the Städel Garden are invited to come face to face with all twelve creatures – and thus every month of the year – and to experience the various joys, adversities, and emotions of an entire year in fast forward. In addition to sculpture, Ugo Rondinone’s oeuvre encompasses various media such as painting, video, and installation. The artist is especially well known for his works in public space, which he has been creating since the 1990s. In the spirit of ‘art for all’, he aims to reach a wide audience with his characteristic outdoor sculptures. In his poetic and conceptual works, Rondinone explores the contradictions of life, creating a dialogue between artificiality and nature, culture and society, eternity and transience.

Curator: Svenja Grosser (Deputy Head of the Collection of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum)
Sponsored by: Freunde der Tat – Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.

Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso
24 May – 17 September 2023
Exhibition Annex
Press Preview: 23 May 2023, 11:00 am

Rodin, Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso, Jean Arp, Yves Klein… They all created outstanding art in the truest sense of the word—reliefs. This summer, the Städel Museum is presenting a major exhibition on the relief from 1800 to the 1960s. Is it painting or sculpture, surface or space? Hardly any artistic medium challenges our sense of sight like the relief. And that is what has always made it so appealing for the most famous artists. From 24 May to 17 September 2023, the exhibition will present prominent works spanning some 160 years by Bertel Thorvaldsen, Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Archipenko, Jean Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Yves Klein, Louise Nevelson, Lee Bontecou and others. For the exhibition, the Städel Museum collaborated with the Hamburger Kunsthalle to bring together works from their own collections and leading European museums, among them the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée Picasso and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. The show will also feature rarely exhibited works from private collections.

“Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso” is being carried out with support from the Gemeinnützige Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain GmbH and the Städelscher Museumsverein e. V. with the Städelfreunde 1815. Additional support for the exhibition comes from the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung.

Städel director Philipp Demandt on the exhibition: “This summer, our visitors will have the opportunity to encounter an exciting artistic medium—the relief: an art form between painting and sculpture that literally breaks through the confines of the frame and bursts the boundaries of our sense of sight! We are devoting a major exhibition to this sometimes underacknowledged medium. The show will be a unique chance to experience some 140 prominent works by nearly 100 groundbreaking artists of the nineteenth century, Classical Modernism and international post-war art right here in Frankfurt and to appreciate the relief for what it is: an expression of great art.”

“The relief is one of humankind’s oldest pictorial mediums. As a hybrid it not only occupies a place between painting and sculpture, but also—in the viewer’s perception—a sensory realm between sight and touch. Our exhibition is devoted to the special possibilities and opportunities offered by the relief in art from Neoclassicism to the 1960s. The period around 1800, with its reorientation towards classical antiquity, represents a distinct break in the meaning and aesthetic of the relief. In the 1960s, on the other hand, the “departure from painting” and the associated transfer of sculptural into spatial concepts mark yet another pivotal point. Rather than providing a comprehensive history of this art form, our exhibition will shed light on the meanwhile somewhat obscure discourse revolving around the art of the relief,” the exhibition curators Alexander Eiling and Eva Mongi-Vollmer add.

From antiquity, we are familiar with the relief primarily as architectural decoration. In the Renaissance it played an important role in the competition between painters and sculptors over which medium best imitates reality. When the relief began to figure increasingly in art-theory debates around 1800, it was referred to as an intermediate medium among the arts. In the zone between the second and third dimension, however, it remained a primarily sculptural endeavour. As time went on, a new artistic interest in overcoming the traditional boundaries between the mediums took hold. Painters made sculptures; sculptors preoccupied themselves with painting. In that context, the relief became a laboratory for experimentation with new forms, materials and techniques. Reliefs were no longer made primarily of the classical materials—that is, stone, clay, plaster or bronze. Artists began using everyday and found objects to open surfaces out into the third dimension. Whether glued or nailed, made with natural sponges or a soup ladle, the relief took on entirely new manifestations. Its significance for society grew with the cataclysmic changes of the early twentieth century: the relief became a place of utopias and a mirror of the departure for a new world.

An exhibition of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Curators: Dr. Alexander Eiling (Head of Modern Art, Städel Museum) and Dr. Eva Mongi-Vollmer (Curator for Special Projects, Städel Museum)
Project director: Dr. Friederike Schütt
Sponsored by: Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH, Städelfreunde 1815 – Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.
With support from: Georg und Franziska Speyer'sche Hochschulstiftung
Media partners: Süddeutsche Zeitung, ARTE, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main Cultural partner: hr2-kultur

Wall texts
Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso
24 May – 17 September 2023
Exhibition Annex

Introduction
Is it painting or sculpture, surface or space? Hardly any artistic medium challenges our sense of sight like the relief. We can contemplate a relief as we would a painting, while at the same time our eyes scan its surface as they would a sculpture. In antiquity the relief served primarily to decorate architecture. In the Renaissance it played an important role in the competition between painters and sculptors over which medium best imitates reality. When the relief began to figure increasingly in art-theory debates around 1800, it was referred to as an intermediate medium among the arts. In the zone between the second and third dimension, however, it remained a primarily sculptural endeavour. As time went on, a new artistic interest in overcoming the traditional boundaries between the mediums took hold. Painters made sculptures; sculptors preoccupied themselves with painting. In that context, the relief became a laboratory for experimentation with new forms, materials and techniques. Reliefs were no longer made primarily of the classical materials—that is, stone, clay, plaster or bronze. Artists began using everyday and found objects to open surfaces out into the third dimension. Whether glued or nailed, whether made with natural sponges or a soup ladle, the relief took on entirely new manifestations. Its significance for society grew with the cataclysmic changes of the early twentieth century: the relief became a place of utopias and a mirror of the departure for a new world. The exhibition explores the tremendous scope of the relief between 1800 and 1970 in thirteen sections, some spanning the entire period, others zooming in on shorter phases. Each in its own way, the sections examine the unique possibilities and limitations of relief art above and beyond historical development lines and conventional stylistic categories.