Images & Texts

PRESS RELEASE

THE MYSTERIES OF MATERIAL. KIRCHNER, HECKEL AND SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF
26 June to 13 October 2019

From 26 June to 13 October, in the exhibition “The Mysteries of Material: Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff”, the Städel Museum will explore the reciprocal relationships between woodcut and wooden sculpture in the oeuvres of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich Heckel (1883–1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976).

Download the complete press text here.

WALL TEXTS

Download the complete wall texts for the exhibition "The Mysteries of Material. Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff" here.

Short biographies of the artists

Download the short biographies of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff here.

PRESS RELEASE

MAKING VAN GOGH: A GERMAN LOVE STORY
23 OCTOBER 2019 TO 16 FEBRUARY 2020
#MakingVanGogh

From 23 October 2019 to 16 February 2020, the Städel Museum is devoting an extensive exhibition to the painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). It focuses on the creation of the “legend of Van Gogh” around 1900 as well as his significance to modern art in Germany. Featuring 50 of his key works, it is the most comprehensive presentation in Germany to include works by the painter for nearly 20 years.

MAKING VAN GOGH addresses the special role that gallery owners, museums, private collectors and art critics played in Germany in the early twentieth century for the posthumous reception of Van Gogh as the “father of modern art”. Just less than 15 years after his death, in this country Van Gogh was perceived as one of the most important precursor of modern painting. Van Gogh’s life and work attracted broad and lasting public interest. His art was collected in Germany unusually early. By 1914 there was an enormous number of works by Van Gogh, around 150 in total, in private and public German collections. At the same time, German artists began to vigorously examine his works. Van Gogh’s painting became a model and a substantial source of inspiration in particular for the young Expressionists. The emergence of modernism in Germany is hardly conceivable without his art.

Van Gogh’s success story is closely connected with the Städel. With the support of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, in 1908 it was one of the first museums to purchase works by the Dutch artist for assembling a modern art collection: the painting Farmhouse in Nuenen (1885) and the drawing Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes (1885). Three years later, the Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890), one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, was bought for the museum’s collection.

The exhibition is supported by the Franz Dieter und Michaela Kaldewei Kulturstiftung and the Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.

In three comprehensive chapters, the exhibition deals with the development and impact of the “legend of Van Gogh” in Germany. How did it come about that Van Gogh became so popular especially in Germany? Who championed his oeuvre, and how did artists respond to it? The exhibition presents Van Gogh as a pivotal figure for art of the German avant-garde. It makes an important contribution to understand the development of art in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Städel unites more than 120 paintings and works on paper in the exhibition. 50 key works by Vincent van Gogh from all of his creative phases constitute the core of the exhibition. On view are outstanding loans from private collections and leading museums world-wide. 70 works by German artists exemplify Van Gogh’s influence and impact on the subsequent generation. These include works by well-known artists such as Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paula Modersohn-Becker or Gabriele Münter as well as by others whose artistic positions could be rediscovered, including Peter August Böckstiegel, Theo von Brockhusen, Heinrich Nauen or Elsa Tischner-von Durant.

Download the complete press text here.

Press Release

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is considered the quintessential modern artistic genius. With untiring creativity and ingenuity, he seemingly effortlessly made use of all genres, techniques, and materials. From 3 April to 30 June, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings will devote an exhibition titled "Picasso. Printmaking as Experiment" specifically to the artist’s graphic oeuvre. Featuring more than sixty etchings, lithographs and linoleum cuts, the exhibition presents a selection from the holdings of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, enhanced by a small number of loans from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and a private collection. The selection vividly illustrates the full range and development of Picasso’s graphic oeuvre from the early years in Paris to his late work.
Whether etching, drypoint, lithography, or linocut, with never-dwindling curiosity and virtuosity, Picasso gained expertise in a wide variety of printmaking techniques, always questioning what he had found in new and experimental ways. The exhibition is structured according to the various printing techniques, which are always closely linked to the artist’s biography. The print series Suite Vollard, which Picasso created between 1930 and 1937 and with which he made full artistic use of the diversity of intaglio printing techniques, has its own section within the exhibition.

“The Städel Museum boasts an exceptional collection of prints by Picasso. It is not for nothing that the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings is considered one of the most important of its kind in Germany. With the exhibition ‘Picasso. Printmaking as Experiment‘, we now present a selection of these outstanding works by Picasso, which cannot be shown permanently due to their delicate nature. For our visitors, this is a special, if not unique opportunity,” says Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

“The graphic work in particular bears witness to Picasso’s productive energy. The complicated technical processes demanded great care from the artist in his work; at the same time, however, the prints also reveal Picasso’s often playful audacity in dealing with new media, as well as his everlasting joy in experimenting,” explains Theresa Nisters, curator of the exhibition.

Early Work
The exhibition begins with a key work from Picasso’s graphic oeuvre, the large-format and pictorially elaborated print Le Repas frugal (The Frugal Repast) from 1904. The artist, who had just settled in Paris, devoted himself extensively to the technique of etching for the first time, and immediately created a masterpiece. Le Repas frugal was created at the turning point between Picasso’s Blue and the Rose Periods, during which his motifs increasingly revolved around the universe of the circus. The acrobats and harlequins portrayed here served him as symbols of the precarious, somewhat “itinerant” position of the artist in his time.
Like Le Repas frugal, the etching Salomé (Salome), created one year later in 1905, was not engraved in a copper plate—typical for etchings—but rather in a zinc plate, which also shows scratches and traces of earlier use. The fact that Picasso used the same plate several times has often been interpreted as an indication of his strained financial situation at the time. He demonstrated his skill, however, which was already pronounced at the age of twenty-four, by integrating the existing hatchings and discolorations into the new composition in a virtuoso manner.

Suite Vollard
The central gallery of the exhibition hall features an exemplary selection of twenty-three sheets from the Suite Vollard, including the masterful mezzotint engraving Minotaure aveugle guidé par une Fillette dans la Nuit (Blind Minotaur Guided in the Night by a Little Girl) from 1934. The altogether 100 etching plates in the series created between 1930 and 1937 were executed during a turbulent period in the life of the then fifty-year-old artist, who separated from his wife Olga Kokhlova and had a relationship with the young Marie-Thérèse Walter. Picasso processed these experiences in his series of prints. It comprises central and recurring subjects in Picasso’s oeuvre: the relationship between artist, model, and artwork; scenes from the sculptor’s studio; the gender struggle between man and woman; and the myth of the Minotaur. The significance of the Suite, however, lies not only in its thematic diversity, but also in its technical range. Here, for the first time, Picasso exploited the entire spectrum of intaglio printing. Through his encounter with the Parisian printer Roger Lacourière in late 1934, Picasso had become acquainted with new techniques such as aquatint, mezzotint, and the sugar-lift process, the painterly effects of which contrasted with the clear graphic lines of the etchings. The Suite Vollard thus demonstrates Picasso’s extraordinary craftsmanship and his great joy in experimenting.

Sueño y mentira de Franco (Dream and Lie of Franco)
When Picasso completed the Suite Vollard in 1937, he had already begun working on another series of etchings titled Sueño y mentira de Franco (Dream and Lie of Franco). After the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936, a group of Spanish delegates asked the famous artist for a contribution to the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World Exhibition in early 1937. Picasso immediately began working on the etching cycle Dream and Lie of Franco but turned down the commission for a large-format painting. When, however, the small Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by an air raid by the National Socialist Condor Legion and the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie on 26 April, 1937, the Spanish artist changed his mind and, appalled by the horror, created the monumental work Guernica (1937, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid). After completing the painting, Picasso continued his work on the two etching plates of Dream and Lie of Franco. Contrary to what was originally planned, their individual images were not cut apart for separate postcard motifs but sold at the World Exposition together with a poem the artist had written himself in a folder designed by him for the benefit of the Spanish Republican government. On the occasion of the present exhibition, the Department of Prints and Drawings has received a rare copy of the complete portfolio as a generous donation and can present it in the exhibition together with the two printing plates on loan from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

Lithographs
Picasso’s lithographic oeuvre is presented in the left wing of the exhibition hall. Whereas the various intaglio printing techniques had dominated his graphic oeuvre for almost fifty years, after the end of the Second World War the artist devoted himself for the first time seriously to another printing process, namely lithography. The artist quickly mastered the possibilities of planographic printing and exploited its rich variety in a large number of works. For over a decade, lithography dominated his graphic work. The motifs of this period are cheerful and depict images of his lovers and bullfights, as well as antique bacchants, fauns, and satyrs. Here, Picasso experimented with unusual tools, such as wire comb and scrapers, as well as with the use of unconventional solvents to prepare the printing process. In addition, the artist attempted various transfer printing processes and, especially after his move to the Côte d'Azur in the late 1940s, used more easily transportable zinc plates as printing blocks in addition to the conventional lithographic stone.

Linocuts
The colorful linocuts from Picasso’s late work conclude the exhibition in the opposite wing of the exhibition hall. From 1954 onwards, he devoted himself to this relief-printing technique, which until then had had no reputation as an artistic medium. The now over seventy-year-old artist helped the linocut to an unexpected heyday—in just ten years, he created more than 200 works. Linocut allowed Picasso to create pictorial motifs out of large, radiant colour fields, developing his own innovative approaches.
For the youngest work in the exhibition, L’Étreinte II (The Embrace, 1963), Picasso developed a completely new linocut process, in which he succeeded in impressively combining the technical characteristics of relief printing, intaglio printing, and planographic printing. L’Étreinte II thus vividly sums up the artist’s joy in experimenting with printmaking techniques.

PICASSO. PRINTMAKING AS EXPERIMENT

Exhibition dates: 3 April to 30 June 2019

Curator: Theresa Nisters (Städel Museum)
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor Service and Guided Tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de

Opening Hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10 am – 6 pm; Thu + Fri 10 am – 9 pm, closed on Mondays
Special Opening Hours (10 am – 6 pm): Fri, 19 April, Sun, 21 April, Mon, 22 April, Wed, 1 May, Thu, 30 May, Sun, 9 June, Mon, 10 June, Thu, 20 June

Admission: Sat, Sun + holidays 16 Euro, reduced 14 Euro; Tue – Fri 14 Euro, reduced 12 Euro; Family Ticket 24 Euro, free admission for children under 12 years; groups of ten or more regular paying persons: concession price per person. Groups are required to book in advance: +49(0)69-605098-200 or email at info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance Ticket Sales: shop.staedelmuseum.de

Introductory Tours of the Exhibition: Fridays 7 pm (except on 19 April), Sundays 2 pm, as well as Fri, April 19 and Mon, April 22 at 2 pm.
Participation is included in the ticket price.

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on social media with the hashtags #picasso and #staedel

Wall Texts

INTRODUCTION
Pablo Picasso is considered the quintessential modern artistic genius. With inexhaustible creative energy and inventiveness – and seemingly little effort –, he availed himself of a wide variety of genres, techniques and materials. A trained painter, over the course of his career he taught himself various printmaking techniques, explored their possibilities and, with his experiments, often arrived at new solutions. As a means of artistic expression, printmaking took on a status for him equal to that of painting and sculpture.
Featuring more than sixty etchings, lithographs and linoleum cuts, this exhibition presents a selection from the holdings of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, enhanced by a number of loans from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and private collections. The sections of the exhibition are devoted to the various printmaking methods Picasso employed, which always also bear a relation to his biography. They mirror the wide diversity of techniques offered by the printmaking medium and shed light on the artist’s experimental approach.

EARLY YEARS
No sooner had Picasso settled in Paris in 1904 than the struggle began to hold his own in the world’s leading art metropolis. It was also the year of the young Spaniard’s first intensive encounter with printmaking. He continued to paint, but also tried his hand at the classical technique of etching, working with themes he also addressed in his paintings. Scenes of poverty and the circus world reflect the artist’s own reality as an outsider to society. The filigree compositions testify to Picasso’s ability to convey powerful moods with simple means. He initially produced only small numbers of prints from the plates he executed. It was not until 1913, by which time he had made a name for himself on the art market, that his art dealer Ambroise Vollard undertook to publish these prints. To that end, he had fourteen of the plates steeled (a chemical hardening process permitting a greater number of high-quality prints) and from them produced the etching series Les Saltimbanques in an edition of 250. The Städel Museum purchased a copy of this series as far back as 1914.

SUITE VOLLARD In several phases from 1930 onward, Picasso produced etchings which, when the number had reached 100 in 1937, his art dealer Ambroise Vollard published as the Suite Vollard. The artist had thus executed the series in a period of his life distinguished by his separation, at the age of fifty, from his wife Olga Kokhlova and his relationship to the young Marie-Thérèse Walter. In the Suite Vollard he reflected on his situation in various recurring themes such as “The Sculptor and His Model” or the “Minotaur”, a self-chosen alter ego. Here the artist’s self-conception and his relationship to his work play a key role.
Picasso’s encounter with the printer Roger Lacourière of Paris in late 1934 led him to begin experimenting with various new etching techniques such as aquatint, mezzotint and sugar-lift. They offered him means of creating painterly two-dimensional surfaces, an effect that contrasts strongly with the clear, graphic lines of conventional etching. The exhibition shows a representative selection of twenty-three sheets from the Suite Vollard, including the masterful mezzotint Blind Minotaur Guided in the Night by a Little Girl.

LITHOGRAPHS Picasso had already worked with lithography briefly in the 1920s. After World War II, his acquaintance with the Parisian printer Fernand Mourlot revived his interest in this printmaking technique. In the decade that followed, it would dominate his production in the printmaking medium. The artist was quick to master the wide range of possibilities offered by lithography and made use of them in a large number of works. He used pen, brush and crayon to achieve both linear-graphic and painterly effects. In the process, he experimented with atypical tools such as the scraper or wire comb, but also with the use of unconventional solvents in preparation for the printing process. Several of the art printers in Mourlot’s workshop recalled the extent to which Picasso’s unusual approach took them to the limits of their abilities. The artist also experimented with various types of transfer printing and – especially after moving to the Côte d’Azur in the late 1940s – in addition to the traditional lithographic stones, also used zinc plates, which were lighter and easier to transport to Paris for printing.

LINOLEUM CUTS
In 1954, Picasso coincidentally made the acquaintance of Hidalgo Arnéra, a printer of Vallauris specializing in linoleum cut. Their first collaboration was on the production of posters advertising bullfights. The artist, meanwhile over seventy years of age, subsequently immersed himself ever more in the technique and helped it to an unprecedented heyday. The linoleum cut allowed Picasso to create pictorial motifs with large areas of vivid colour, and he developed several new methods within that framework. He was particularly interested in the “reduction” principle. This means that the artist works with only a single printing plate, printing the interim states on the same sheet of paper one on top of the other in different colours. Picasso’s linoleum prints are the products of the highest degree of precision and concentration: the artist must plan every step in the process in advance. In 1962, in his Handbook of Graphic Reproduction Processes, Felix Brunner wrote: “Only a short time ago the author would have found it difficult to reproduce a convincing example of a lino-cut. But now Pablo Picasso has produced a sequence of beautiful multi-colour lino-cuts an entire series of beautiful, multicolour linocuts […], which will occupy an important place in the history of graphic art.”

DREAM AND LIE OF FRANCO Civil war raged in Spain from 1936 to 1939. Portugal, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany supported the military under the command of General Franco in the battle against the country’s democratically elected socialist government.
In early 1937, a few months after the republican government had made Picasso honorary director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, a group of Spanish delegates called on him in his Paris studio. They had come to ask the famous artist to make a contribution to the Spanish pavilion at the world fair that would take place in the French metropolis that summer. Picasso spontaneously began work on the etching cycle Dream and Lie of Franco. His original plan was to cut out the individual scenes and sell them at the pavilion as postcards. He initially refused the commission for a large-scale painting, but in April began making sketches on the theme of “the artist and his model”.
When the National Socialist Legion Condor and the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie levelled the town of Guernica with an aerial bombing attack on 26 April 1937, Picasso abandoned this idea. In response to the destruction, he executed his monumental painting Guernica (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía) within just a few weeks.
He then continued work on the two etching plates for Dream and Lie of Franco, now changing the theme. In the final scenes of the second plate, he replaced the grotesque caricature of the general with the desperate figure of a weeping woman and her dead child.

Picasso carried out the work on the two etching plates of Dream and Lie of Franco in two stages: He completed the first plate in the traditional etching technique on 8 January 1937. After pulling a number of proofs, he revised this first state with the sugar-lift method, enhancing the graphic line drawing with surface tones. The same day, the artist divided the second plate into nine pictorial fields. On 9 January, however, he composed scenes in only five of them and etched the plate. Then he revised the second plate as well, again with the abovementioned aquatint method and the aid of a scraper. It wasn’t until 7 June that he continued his work on the second plate. On that day, he filled the remaining pictorial fields of the second plate with pictures, departing from the figural repertoire of the earlier scenes. He had meanwhile completed the painting Guernica in which he reacted to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. The two etchings of Dream and Lie of Franco thus served both as preparation for the monumental painting, and as a reflection on it after it was finished.

BIOGRAPHY
1881 Pablo Picasso is born in Málaga on 25 October, the son of the painter José Ruiz Blasco and his wife María Picasso López.
1896 Admission to the La Lonia art school in Barcelona. One year later, transfer to the Academia San Fernando, Madrid.
1899 Executes his first etching, El Zurdo.
1900 First trip to Paris; his travel companion is Carlos Casagemas.
1901 Picasso processes Casagemas’s suicide in the so-called Blue Period. He begins to sign his works with his mother’s surname “Picasso”. In the summer, the gallery of Ambroise Vollard stages his first exhibition in Paris.
1904 Settles in Paris and has a studio in the “Bateau-Lavoir”, Montmartre. His Parisian friends include Juan Gris, Henri Matisse, Marie Laurencin, Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire.
Executes his second etching, Le Repas Frugal.
1905 The Rose Period begins. Picasso carries out etchings with circus motifs. In addition to the acid etching technique, also employs the drypoint etching method. Eugène Delâtre pulls a small number of proofs from the unsteeled plates.
1907 Completion of the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and first Cubist works.
Picasso acquires a small hand press that allows him to print from his plates himself.
1913 Now that Picasso’s international recognition has become established, Ambroise Vollard publishes 14 etchings of the years 1904 and 1905 as the series Les Saltimbanques, printed by Louis Fort.
1918 Marriage to Olga Kokhlova. A son, Paulo, will proceed from this union.
1927 Encounter with Marie-Thérèse Walter. First etchings on the subject of “The Artist and His Model”.
1930 Picasso purchases the Boisgeloup Castle near Gisors, where he produces a series of head sculptures in plaster for which Marie-Thérèse serves as model.
First etchings of female nudes later included in the Suite Vollard.
1933 In an unusually prolific phase, the artist executes 40 plates on the subject of “The Sculptor’s Studio”, 11 on the “Minotaur” and 5 on the motif of “Rape” within just a few months. All will later be published in the Suite Vollard.
1934 Begins collaboration with Roger Lacourière, who will introduce Picasso to the sugar-lift technique and the use of the burin.
1935 Picasso and Olga separate. Marie-Thérèse gives birth to a daughter, Maya, fathered by Picasso.
1937 Completion of the Suite Vollard with three portraits of the publisher.
Starting on 8 January, Picasso works on the two-part etching Dream and Lie of Franco, which he finishes on 7 June after completing his monumental painting Guernica.
1945 Picasso begins working with the lithographer Fernand Mourlot in November. The collaboration will continue for many years.
1946-1953 Picasso lives primarily on the Côte d’Azur with Françoise Gilot and their children Claude and Paloma. He works with the lithography technique.
1954 Relationship with Jacqueline Roque begins.
Picasso makes the acquaintance of the printer Hidalgo Arnéra. Now the linoleum cut will dominate his printmaking activities until 1964.
1973 Pablo Picasso dies in Mougins on 8 April.

Starting on 13 February 2019, the Städel Museum will devote a major special exhibition to one of the most momentous chapters in the history of European art: Venetian painting of the Renaissance. Entitled “Titian and the Renaissance in Venice”, the show unites more than a hundred masterpieces – In the early sixteenth century, artists of the “City of Water” developed an independent strain of the Renaissance relying on purely painterly means and the impact of light and colour. One of their most important exponents was Titian (ca. 1488/90–1576), who would hold the key position in the Venetian art scene all his life. The Frankfurt show assembles more than twenty examples by Titian alone – and thus the most extensive selection of his works ever before on display in Germany. It will also present paintings and drawings by Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1435–1516), Jacopo Palma il Vecchio (1479/80–1528), Sebastiano del Piombo (ca. 1485–1547), Lorenzo Lotto (ca. 1480–1556/57), Jacopo Tintoretto (ca. 1518/19–1594), Jacopo Bassano (ca. 1510–1592), Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) and others. These works will offer comprehensive insights into the artistic and thematic breadth of the Renaissance in Venice and elucidate why artists of later centuries looked back to the art of this time and place again and again for orientation. The exhibition introduces selected aspects of Venetian cinquecento painting in eight sections: for example its atmospherically charged landscape depictions, its ideal likenesses of beautiful women (the so-called “belle donne”), or the importance of colour. The thematically oriented chapters will together form a systematic panorama of the extensive material. Apart from the Venetian holdings in the Städel collection – including, Titian’s Portrait of a Young Man (ca. 1510) – the show brings together superb loans from more than sixty museums in Germany and abroad.

The exhibition was made possible by support from the Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung and the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH.

“This powerful theme – an art-historical classic – has recently come more strongly into focus in German museums. It gives us great pleasure to be able to present such a comprehensive, thematically structured panorama of Venetian painting of the Renaissance for the first time ever in Germany here in Frankfurt”, comments Städel director Philipp Demandt.

Titian’s contemporaries, for example Sebastiano del Piombo or Lorenzo Lotto, were soon spreading the innovations beyond the watery confines of Venice as well. The 1540s saw the emergence of a new generation of highly gifted artists, among them Jacopo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Bassano, who now likewise competed for commissions. It was Titian, however, who set the standards for his rivals and admirers alike. “Hardly any epoch of art history has known such continual reception. And within that context, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese have been accorded the admiration otherwise reserved solely for Michelangelo and Raphael”, exhibition curator Bastian Eclercy emphasizes.

A Tour of the Exhibition
The exhibition begins by taking visitors on a representative tour of sixteenth-century Venice. In the giant woodcut View of Venice (1498–1500; Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum) based on a design by Jacopo de’ Barbari and published by Anton Kolb, the unusual bird’s-eye perspective provides an astoundingly precise impression of the “Serenissima’s” unique topography.

The prominently placed, large-scale Rest on the Flight into Egypt (ca. 1572; Sarasota, FL, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art) by Paolo Veronese ushers visitors directly into the first section of the show, introducing a typically Venetian variation on the depiction of the Madonna, a dominant theme in Italy. In its painterly execution, this exotic altarpiece is considered a magnum opus of the Venetian Renaissance; it also marks both the end and the culmination of the development of a pictorial genre known as the “Sacra Conversazione” (“sacred conversation”). Over the course of the sixteenth century, the motif had been invested with ever greater vividness and interaction between the figures. And particularly in Venice, the traditional subject of the Virgin and Child was often expanded to include further protagonists.
From depictions of the Virgin Mary set in luxurious landscapes, the focus shifts to the genre of landscape painting proper – one of the great achievements of the Venetian Renaissance. Even if it is initially still linked with a figural narrative, landscape now takes centre stage as a signifier of mood. This chapter of the exhibition highlights both the lyrical natural sceneries by the early Titian and the dramatically charged ones by such artists as Veronese or Bassano. Over time, these works would come to serve as the foundation for the establishment of the landscape as a genre in its own right. Especially in their mythological compositions, the painters breathed new life into the idea of Arcadia romanticized by the poets of antiquity as an ideal environment.

At this juncture, the exhibition rooms open onto an architecture traversed by arcades. Artistic compositions inspired by poetry – already alluded to in the previous section – are featured here as an independent genre. Sixteenth-century Venetian painters of mythological scenes were no longer content with merely illustrating the literary material, but now laid claim to equal rights in the poetic license of invention. Among the examples representing this development are Titian’s Boy with Dogs in a Landscape (ca. 1570–76; Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) and Veronese’s Cupid with Two Dogs (ca. 1580; Munich, Alte Pinakothek), which bears a resemblance to the Titian work. Both paintings have continued to defy interpretation to this day.

The final section of this first part of the exhibition is like a return to reality – but only at first sight. That is because true-to-life likenesses of women were rare in Venice, whereas “ideal portraits” of beautiful ladies were quite common. Even if they are often classified as portrait paintings, the “belle donne” depicted in these works were presumably not real persons, but poetic ideals of feminine beauty. Within the context of this exhibition, a new interpretation of Sebastiano del Piombo’s fascinating Woman in Blue with Incense Burner (ca. 1510/11; Washington, National Gallery of Art) has led to its identification as an early example of this genre. It exhibits the typical features of the ideal of beauty prevailing in the period in question: a roundish face, voluptuous lips, an enigmatic gaze and dark blond hair. An excursus in this section, based on the costume book De gli habiti antichi et moderni di diverse parti del mondo (1590; Of Ancient and Modern Dress of Diverse Parts of the World) by Cesare Vecellio, a cousin of Titian’s, is devoted to contemporary fashions in Venice and beyond.

Now the tour continues on the first floor of the exhibition annex. Taking its starting point in the Frankfurt portrait of a young man from Titian’s early period, this chapter explores how the Venetian male portrait came to flourish in the cinquecento – and to exert a lasting influence on European portrait painting. Characteristic examples here are the portraits of casually elegant young men in black, for example by Titian or Tintoretto, based on Baldassare Castiglione‘s Libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier). Yet expensively dressed wearers of ermine and portraits of the doges – the chief magistrates of the Republic of Venice – also contributed to shaping the image of the era. At the centre of the room, visitors encounter three depictions of men in splendid armour. The special degree of mastery such paintings required of their makers is evident, for example, in Sebastiano del Piombo‘s Man in Armour (ca. 1511/12; Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art) or Titian’s Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos (ca. 1533; Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum). With their depictions of the gleaming metallic surfaces, the artists achieved a highly realistic impression of light.
Colour and effects – Unlike the painting of Florence and Rome, which was based more strongly on drawing, the Venetian Renaissance is distinguished above all by the art of colour, called “colorito”. The fact that Venice was a centre of the paint trade will surely have played a role in this phenomenon. The Venetian palette ranged from berry red to gloomy black, from chiaroscuro to brilliant polychromy. Whereas the Florentines favoured smooth, porcelain-like surfaces, the Venetians often left the brushstroke clearly visible as a testimony to the act of painting.
The second-to-last chapter of the show takes a look at the reception of Florentine art in the Venetian cinquecento. It was particularly the depiction of muscular male nudes as perfected by Michelangelo that impressed the Venetians in the art of Florence. Nude males such as Titian’s Frankfurt Study of St Sebastian (ca. 1520) or his St John the Baptist (ca. 1530–33; Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia), or Tintoretto’s St Jerome (ca. 1571/72; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) bear witness to an in-depth artistic study of the great Florentine master’s work and to a reciprocal influence.

The final section of the exhibition will feature a number of works representing the long history of its influence. Many of the most prominent artists have schooled themselves on this powerfully colourful painting and exported it – in the case of El Greco, for example, to Spain. The great French painters of the nineteenth century, for instance Théodore Géricault, were likewise among those to learn from Titian and Veronese. And most recently, Thomas Struth made the contemporary musealization of Venetian painting the subject of his photographs, reversing the relationship in the process: in his pictures, the viewers of pictures are now themselves viewed. In this case by the visitors of the Frankfurt Städel.

TITIAN AND THE RENAISSANCE IN VENICE

Curator: Dr. Bastian Eclercy, Head of the Collection of Italian, French and Spanish Painting before 1800, Städel Museum
Scholarly advice: Prof. Dr. Hans Aurenhammer, Kunstgeschichtliches Institut, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Project management: Adela Kutschke, research assistant, Städel Museum
Exhibition dates: 13 February to 26 May 2019
Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor services and guided tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10 am – 6 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am – 9 pm
Special opening hours (10 am – 6 pm): 19, 21 and 22 April, 1 May
Admission: Sat, Sun + holidays 16 EUR, reduced 14 EUR; Tue – Fri 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR; families 24 EUR; admission free for children under 12; groups of at least 10 persons who would normally be charged the full admission fee: reduced admission fee per person. Groups are required to book in advance: please call +49(0)69-605098-200 or contact info@staedelmuseum.de
Early Bird Ticket: 12 EUR (limited offer before the exhibition opening)
General guided tours of the exhibition: Tue 3.00 pm, Wed 1.00 pm, Thu 6.30 pm, Fri 6.00 pm, Sat 4.00 pm, Sun 12.00 noon, also Fri, 19 Apr and Mon, 22 Apr at 4.00 pm on both days. The number of participants is limited. Tickets for the guided tours are available in advance for 5 EUR online at shop.staedelmuseum.de or starting two hours before the tour at the cashier’s desk.
Advance ticket sales online at: shop.staedelmuseum.de

Framework programme:
Standpoints on Art: Thu, 28 Feb, 7.00 pm: Prof. Peter Humfrey (University of St Andrews), “Exhibiting Titian”. Lecture in English. Admission is included in museum admission fee; for booking: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de Thu, 2 May, 7.00 pm: Prof. Dr. Hans Aurenhammer (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main), “Allzu menschliche Götter? Parodistisches in venezianischen Mythologien von Bellini bis Tintoretto”. Lecture in German. Admission is included in museum admission fee; for booking: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
The exhibition will be accompanied by an extensive framework programme. For up-to-date information, please consult www.staedelmuseum.de.

Catalogue: A comprehensive catalogue edited by Bastian Eclercy and Hans Aurenhammer and published by the Prestel Verlag will accompany the exhibition. With a foreword by Philipp Demandt and contributions by Maria Aresin, Hans Aurenhammer, Andrea Bayer, Anne Bloemacher, Daniela Bohde, Beverly Louise Brown, Stefanie Cossalter-Dallmann, Benjamin Couilleaux, Heiko Damm, Rita Delhées, Jill Dunkerton, Bastian Eclercy, Martina Fleischer, Iris Hasler, Frederick Ilchman, Roland Krischel, Ann Kathrin Kubitz, Adela Kutschke, Sofia Magnaguagno, Tom Nichols, Tobias Benjamin Nickel, Susanne Pollack, Volker Reinhardt, Julia Saviello, Francesca Del Torre Scheuch, Catherine Whistler and Matthias Wivel. German edition, 272 pages, 39.90 EUR (museum edition), English edition, 272 pages, 49 EUR (bookshop price).
Exhibition booklet: A booklet in German will be forthcoming to accompany the exhibition; 7.50 EUR.
Digitorial®: The digitorial is being made possibly by the Fazit Stiftung. It will be available at tizian.staedelmuseum.de from 23 January 2019.
Audio tour: The guided audio tour of the exhibition will be available in German and English. The German version is narrated by the TV, movie and stage actress Julia Jäger, who plays in the crime series “Donna Leon” (as Paola Brunetti) and in the Oscar-winning short film “Spielzeugland”. The tour is available free of charge as an app for iOS and Android and can be conveniently downloaded onto your smartphone wherever you have Internet. On site at the museum, the audio guide is available for rental for 4.50 EUR (8 EUR for two audio guides).
Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on social media with the hashtags #tizian, #renaissance and #venedig.

Supported by: Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH
With additional support from: Fazit Stiftung

Media partner: Süddeutsche Zeitung
Culture partner: hr2-kultur

Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism
26 September 2018 to 13 January 2019
Exhibition house
Until 13 January 2019, the Städel Museum shows the special exhibition “Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism”. The retrospective presents the founder of the op art of the 1960s with more than one hundred works. Victor Vasarely’s (1906–1997) oeuvre, however, spans more than sixty years and makes use of the most diverse styles and influences: Key works of all phases of his production trace the development of the once-in-a century artist. Often reduced to his op art, the artist forged a bridge between the early modernism of Eastern and Central Europe and the avant-gardes of the Swinging Sixties in the West. He drew on traditional media and genres throughout his career, incorporating the multiple, mass production, and architecture into his complex work in the 1950s. The wide-ranging retrospective understands itself as a rediscovery of a crucial twentieth-century artist who reflects modernism in all its complexity like no other.
“Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism” was prepared in close collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which will present the exhibition “Vasarely, le partage des forms” from February 2019.
Curators: Dr Martin Engler (Städel Museum), Dr Jana Baumann
With support from: the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States
Supporter of contemporary art at the Städel Museum: Deutsche Bank AG

Lotte Laserstein. Face to Face
19 September 2018 to 17 March 2019
Städel Museum
Until 17 March 2019, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main presents a comprehensive solo exhibition with works by the painter Lotte Laserstein (1898–1993). Laserstein’s oeuvre is one of the great recent art historical rediscoveries and features sensitive and compelling portraits from the final years of the Weimar Republic. The exhibition builds upon works from the collection of the Städel Museum, which in the past few years was successful in acquiring important works by the artist, including the paintings Russian Girl with Compact from 1928 and Boy with Kasper Puppet (Wolfgang Karger) from 1933. With approximately forty paintings and drawings, the exhibition focusses on Laserstein’s artistic development. Emphasis is placed on works from the 1920s and 30s, which mark the peak of her artistic work. “Lotte Laserstein. Face to Face” is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Germany outside of Berlin.
After its launch at the Städel Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Berlinische Galerie, where it will be on show from April 2019. There it will be complemented with, among others, works created by Lotte Laserstein while in exile.
Curators: Dr Alexander Eiling (Städel Museum), Elena Schroll (Städel Museum)
With support from: Ernst Max von Grunelius-Stiftung, Rudolf-August Oetker-Stiftung, Friede Springer Stiftung.
With additional support from: the city of Frankfurt am Main

Titian and the Renaissance in Venice
13 February to 26 May 2019
Exhibition house
In the spring of 2019, the Städel Museum will devote itself to one of the most momentous chapters in the history of European art: Venetian Renaissance painting. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the artists of the lagoon city – first and foremost the young Titian (ca. 1488/90–1576) – developed an independent strain of the Renaissance relying on purely painterly means and the impact of light and colour. This new approach caused a sensation in Venice, and its exponents were soon spreading the innovations outside the city republic as well. In the 1540s, yet another highly talented young generation – now embodied by Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese – came on the scene to vie for commissions in Venice.
In its various sections the exhibition introduces selected characteristic aspects of Venetian painting from the sixteenth century – for example the atmospherically charged landscape depictions that heralded landscape painting as a genre in its own right, the ideal likenesses of beautiful women (Belle Donne), or the importance of colour for the art of the Venetians. With more than a hundred masterworks from international collections, the show is the first in Germany to present a first-rate, thematically structured panorama of Venetian Renaissance painting. The large-scale exhibition features more than twenty examples by Titian alone – the figure who held the key position in the Venetian art scene all his life – and thus the most extensive selection of his works ever before on display in Germany. It also presents works by Giovanni Bellini (ca. 1435–1516), Jacopo Palma il Vecchio (1479/80–1528), Sebastiano del Piombo (ca. 1485–1547), Lorenzo Lotto (ca. 1480–1556/57), Jacopo Tintoretto (ca. 1518/19–1594) and Paolo Veronese (1528–1588). The exhibition offers comprehensive insights into the artistic and thematic spectrum of the Renaissance in Venice and elucidates why so many widely differing artists of later centuries looked back to works of this period again and again for orientation.
Curator: Dr Bastian Eclercy (Städel Museum)
With support from: Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH

Picasso. Printmaking as Experiment
3 April to 30 June 2019
Exhibition hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was the quintessential modern artistic genius. With untiring imaginativeness and creative energy – and apparent ease –, he availed himself of all genres, techniques and materials, frequently treading uncharted paths in the process. Starting on 3 April 2019, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings will shed light on the pleasure Picasso took in artistic invention as illustrated by works in the printmaking medium. Whether etching, drypoint, lithography or linocut, with unceasing curiosity and consistent mastery the artist acquired every printmaking technique and, in ever-new, ever-experimental ways, investigated what he found in them.
In a selection of some sixty works from the collection of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings, the exhibition will provide insights into the kaleidoscope of Picasso’s printmaking oeuvre and explore his innovative handling of relief, intaglio and planographic printing from his early Paris years to his late work.
Curator: Dr Theresa Nisters (Städel Museum)

The Graduates of the Städelschule
20 June to 14 July 2019
Exhibition house, ground floor
In 2019, the graduates’ exhibition of the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule – will once again take place at the Städel Museum. The presentation in the exhibition annex will offer well-founded insights into the multifaceted production of the young artists emerging from Frankfurt’s internationally renowned art academy.

The Mysteries of Material. Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff (working title)
26 June to 13 October 2019
Exhibition house, first floor
In a special exhibition starting in the summer of 2019, the Städel Museum will explore the reciprocal relationships between woodcut and wooden sculpture in the oeuvres of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich Heckel (1883–1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976). The show’s starting point is wood, which is more closely bound to the art of German Expressionism than any other material. What appealed to the artists especially about wood was its unevenness and grain, but also its differing hues and degrees of hardness.
After Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff together formed the “Brücke” artists’ association in Dresden in 1905, the woodcut became one of their most important artistic mediums. Until well into the 1920s/’30s, their specific mode of expression and the pleasure they took in experimentation were particularly evident in the works executed in this printing technique. What is more, at around the time of their first woodcuts and in close connection to them, the three artists also carved reliefs, nude figures and heads in wood that influenced their woodcuts with regard to both form and content – and vice versa.
Showcasing some ninety woodcuts, five woodcut blocks and a series of sculptures, the exhibition will explore the artists’ special approach to the printing technique and the handling of the material. The Städel will be able to draw on its own holdings – the collection of the Frankfurt art patron Carl Hagemann – for a large proportion of the works.
Curator: Dr Regina Freyberger (Städel Museum)

MAKING VAN GOGH. A GERMAN LOVE STORY
23 October 2019 to 16 February 2020
Garden Halls
From 23 October 2019 to 16 February 2020, the Städel Museum will present a comprehensive exhibition on Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). The extensive show will revolve around the special significance of German gallery owners, collectors, critics and museums for the success story of this precursor of modern painting, while also illuminating his role as a decisive figure for the art of German Expressionism. It will feature some 140 paintings and works on paper, including around 50 of the artist’s key works.
The exhibition is the first ever to take an in-depth look at Van Gogh’s œuvre in the context of its reception in Germany. Its point of departure is a selection of major works from all phases of the Dutch painter’s career. Building on that foundation, the presentation will be devoted to Van Gogh’s significance for the development of German art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Here an important reference point will be the Städel’s extensive collection of Expressionist works. Alongside well-known examples by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter and Max Beckmann, the show will also feature artists meriting rediscovery – and on whom Van Gogh had an equally formative influence –, for example Peter August Böckstiegel, Maria Slavona or Heinrich Nauen.
The Städel will present outstanding works from collections in Germany and abroad, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Prague and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Among the highlights will be the self-portraits from the Art Institute in Chicago and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, but also the famous paintings Augustine Roulin (Rocking a Cradle) (1889, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
Curators: Dr Alexander Eiling (Städel Museum), Dr Felix Krämer (Kunstpalast Düsseldorf)
Supported by: Franz Dieter und Michaela Kaldewei Kulturstiftung, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.
With additional support from: The City of Frankfurt am Main

"Great Realism & Great Abstraction" - Drawings from Max Beckmann to Gerhard Richter
13 November 2019 to 16 February 2020
Exhibition house, first floor
Great realism, great abstraction – the approximately 1,800, twentieth-century German drawings in the collection of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings occupy a realm between these two poles. In the winter of 2019/2020, the museum will show a representative selection of some 100 works mirroring the emphases of the collection that have taken shape over the course of its long history.
Drawings by Max Beckmann (1884–1950) and the “Brücke” artists – first and foremost Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) – will form the prelude. They developed a pictorial language that, varying between the near-representational and the abstract, carried over into the works of artists who devoted themselves to figurative and abstract tendencies in divided post-war Germany. These include exponents of Informel, Neoexpressionist currents and Pop Art, among them Karl Otto Götz (1914–2017), Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), Georg Baselitz (1938), Gerhard Richter (1932) and Sigmar Polke (1941–2010).
Drawing served the artists as a means of immediate expression, whether in the trenches of World War I, the boulevards of the awakening metropolis of Berlin or in the midst of the emerging world of consumption and commodities. In this medium, they constructed idealistic life plans, rebelled against established traditions in politics and society, or reflected on decisive events in German history. Because it was the respective context that determined the technique, the works on view will range from simple pencil sketches and miniature-like chalk drawings to vivid pastels and watercolours and even monumental collages.
The catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be the first ever to investigate the Städel Museum’s collection of twentieth-century German drawings on the basis of selected examples.
Curator: Dr Jenny Graser (Städel Museum)
With support from: Stiftung Gabriele Busch-Hauck Frankfurt am Main

Exhibition titles and dates subject to change

From 26 September 2018, the Städel Museum shows the special exhibition "Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism". The retrospective presents the founder of the op art of the 1960s with more than one hundred works. Victor Vasarely’s (1906–1997) oeuvre, however, spans more than sixty years and makes use of the most diverse styles and influences: Key works of all phases of his production trace the development of the once-in-a century artist. Often reduced to his op art, the artist forged a bridge between the early modernism of Eastern and Central Europe and the avant-gardes of the Swinging Sixties in the West. He drew on traditional media and genres throughout his career, incorporating the multiple, mass production, and architecture into his complex work in the 1950s. The exhibition also looks back at Vasarely’s beginnings as an artist with such works as Hommage au carré (1929) or figurative paintings like Autoportrait (1944). The selection spans from early works like Zèbres (1937) and his Noir-et-Blanc period of the 1950s to the main works of op art such as the Vega pictures of the 1970s. The wide-ranging retrospective understands itself as a rediscovery of a crucial twentieth-century artist who reflects modernism in all its complexity like no other.

Next to important loans from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, or the Michele Vasarely Foundation, the exhibition presents not least the dining hall created for the Deutsche Bundesbank as an outstanding example of Vasarely’s room-spanning architectural designs. "Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism" was prepared in close collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which will present the exhibition "Vasarely, le partage des formes" immediately following the show in Frankfurt. The two exhibitions share crucial loans like the dining hall, which has been especially dismantled for the presentation in Frankfurt.

The exhibition could be realized thanks to the support from German Federal Cultural Foundation and Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States. Another important foothold for the show was provided by the long-term sponsorship of Deutsche Bank as partner of the Städel Museum, which allows the Contemporary Art Department to pursue its collecting activities.

"With ‘Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth Of Modernism’, the Städel Museum dedicates itself not only to one of the perhaps best-known unknown figures of European post-war art but once again to one of the central issues of contemporary art: the continuity of first and second modernism and their importance for present-day art," says Städel Director Philipp Demandt.

"Vasarely brought the Renaissance space that had been ignored by modernism back into the picture. Yet the central perspective coordinates were no longer reliable. The spaces he designed are dynamically inviting, labyrinthine, and problematic all at once. Only if we recognize his room-spanning op art compositions’ breath-taking abysses in terms of both form and content will his art turn into a fascinating testimony to what we call modernism," adds Martin Engler, curator of the exhibition and Head of Contemporary Art at the Städel Museum.

In the show, Victor Vasarely can be rediscovered as one of the most crucial representatives of twentieth-century art, whose pictorial language has taken root in the collective memory without having been exactly located by art history. Vasarely’s origins as an artist are marked by his encounter with early modernism. He was influenced by theories of the Bauhaus and suprematism. His later technoid and psychedelically colourful works, which pushed into space, were aimed at deceiving the viewer’s perception. These works are representative of those years of awakening and their society with its faith in the future. They define the appearance of modernism in the 1960s and 1970s and are part of both the avant-garde and popular culture. Spreading his works in the form of multiples and editions made Vasarely’s works omnipresent. The popularity he strove for, concerned with a democratisation of art, also made them a mass product—in the best and in the worst sense. If we read his labyrinthine compositions, his illusionist works, the abysses of his early oeuvre, and his—at first sight—primarily colourful op art pictures within the context of their time as regards both painting and content, we will come to understand his art as a fascinating testimony to modernism’s project of the century in all its contradictory nature.

Tour through the exhibition
The exhibition "Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism", which highlights the origins and development of the artist’s work across two floors, follows a reverse chronology. The visitor will first come upon Vasarely’s key works of the 1970s and 1960s, before he will be guided through his varied oeuvre back to his early production of the 1930s and 1920s. "The reverse chronology of the presentation with its free-standing display panels is mainly intended to make the work of one of the best-known unknown twentieth-century artists, which abounds with concatenations and contradictions, accessible as a visual experience. The impossible as a possibility was Victor Vasarely’s impellent: a project with which he both unsettled and extended the traditional notions of space in the fine arts in a visionary way," Jana Baumann, curator of the exhibition in the Städel Museum, explains. Thanks to the multiple visual axes resulting from the open architecture, the presentation reveals how consistently Vasarely’s work evolved throughout several decades despite the formal differences of individual groups of works.

The show starts in the basement of the Exhibition House with the dining hall of the Deutsche Bundesbank designed by Vasarely and his son Yvaral, which was specially dismantled for the exhibition in the Städel Museum. The work impressively exemplifies the artist’s endeavour to extend his work from the canvas into space and to penetrate into the quotidian world in this way. Vasarely’s reproducible pictorial system opened up the possibility of a democratic dissemination of his art. With his architectonic integrations and multiples—like Kroa Multicolor (1963–1968) or Pyr (1967)—he, following in the tradition of Bauhaus, pursued the goal to intervene creatively in the everyday realm. The year 1972 found him at the peak of his career, his work omnipresent. He not only designed the logo for the Olympics but was also commissioned to go over the brand logo by Renault.

Subsequently, the visitor comes upon Vasarely’s psychedelically colourful Vega series. These technoid compositions still define the image of op art and the artist today. The cuboids, spheres, and rhombi of the series push their way into space in a trompe-l’oeil-like manner. Vasarely achieved this visual effect by a systematic distorting enlargement or reduction of individual squares or circles. In his two-times-two-meter-large work Vega Pal (1969) or in Vega 200 (1968), the composition virtually shoves out from the picture as a dynamic hemisphere. Vasarely’s painting in oil or acrylics anticipates the computer-generated aesthetics of later generations. Deliberately unfolding in a polyphonic way from here on, the continuation of the tour reveals to what degree Vasarely stretched the modernist heritage, particularly of geometric abstraction, and made it vibrate. Visitors will not find themselves confronted with a geometry resting in itself but rather with room-filling paintings extending into space that irritate them and unfold a dynamics which sucks them into an abyss.

Starting from the Vega pictures, different visual axes afford insights into the artist’s Folklore planétaire period, powerful in both its forms and colours, and the invention of ‘unité plastique’, from which the works of this period emerged. Vasarely’s rigid pictorial system combines two basic geometric shapes, the square and the circle, with an equally clearly defined colour spectrum comprising six local colours. The outcome is a pictorial method that allows to ‘produce’ ever-new pictures requiring hardly any artistic decisions: the ‘plastic alphabet’. Within the open exhibition architecture, works like Calota MC (1967) or CTA 102 (1965), which are based on the ‘plastic unity’ principle and evolved from the ‘plastic alphabet’, enter into a dialogue with the Vega works as well as with those of the Noir-et-Blanc period preceding them. Apart from the reduction to black and white, this phase of Vasarely’s production saw the artist’s final turn towards geometric abstraction—albeit an abstraction that was already gently set in motion, anticipating the picture-immanent dynamics of the Vega series.

Positioned in the centre of the basement, the programmatic picture Hommage à Malevich (1952–1958) connects Vasarely’s early period and main work and presents itself as key for his entire oeuvre, with Malevich’s Black Square being set in motion, geometric shapes swivelling into space, and squares turning into rhombi, creating various levels. The exhibit Tlinko-II (1956), whose clear grid pattern is dynamized by single squares tilting from the picture surface and thus turning into rhombi, exemplifies this in a similarly impressive manner. Such solutions laid the foundations for Vasarely’s art that declared the issues of seeing and perceiving a field for experimentation and strove to overcome the statics of modernism.

The artist’s Photographismes, which mark the beginning of his Noir-et-Blanc series—and thus of op art—are equally important for his pictorial language. Vasarely explored the black-and-white principle of photography and used it in his India ink drawings for his early Photographismes. It seems as if the positive and negative versions of a photograph have been inaccurately stacked on top of each other. The tightly packed strips in black and white create the impression of a shimmering pictorial surface. The section featuring works like Naissance-N (1951) or Fugue (1958–1960) thus sheds light on the early beginnings and preliminary stages of op art.

Pursuing the story of the reverse chronology further, the second part of the show on the upper floor of the Exhibition House begins with three very different groups of works, which the artist worked on more or less in parallel, however. The pictures of the Belle-Isle, Gordes-Cristal and Denfert series are abstractions that still indicate their subjects in their titles. The works of these groups are not only independent but also wonderful modernist achievements in the best sense; their skilled compositions as well as their formal and intellectual austerity presage the perfectionist of future decades. The organic colour and form surfaces of the Belle Isle series were inspired by the shells and stones the artist found on the beach. The Gordes-Cristal works, on the other hand, hark back to optical impressions Vasarely received in Gordes, a mountain village in the South of France. Its crystalline roofscapes with their many nooks and crannies tilt into the two-dimensional and turn into abstract geometric compositions. When Vasarely contemplated a rectangular window opening in the dark interior of a house, however, he no longer perceived this opening in the sun’s rays as flat but as a light cube. This was the cornerstone for Vasarely’s idea of the reversibility of two-dimensional forms and stereopsis, the perception of depth and three-dimensional structure, linked with it. The Denfert series takes its name from the Paris underground station Denfert-Rochereau, which the artist regularly passed in the 1930s, finding inspiration in its cracked tiles.

The last part of the exhibition highlights Victor Vasarely’s beginnings in the milieu of the historical avant-gardes in Budapest. His first known works, such as Hommage au carré (1929), already suggest the room-spanning dynamics of the op art of the 1960s. The modernist statics resting in itself was set in motion, albeit only ethereally at the time, with differently coloured squares subtly converging when receding into the depth of the picture plane. Yet even here, there can be doubt that the artist is not concerned with the merely visual, with an optical game. The technically perfect Études de mouvement—finger exercises of the commercial artist Vasarely originally was in Budapest and Paris—shed light on the significance that applied art had for his work and thinking from the very beginnings. Yet it is above all the parallel creation of the first Zèbres and such a bewildering figuration as Les bagnards (The Convicts, 1935) that astounds us beyond measure. Very different in their objective and aesthetics, the pictures share the reduced black-and-white repeat that, reducing the subjects in a markedly similar way, makes both zebras and convicts oscillate and irritates the viewer optically and in terms of their contents. This also reflects the interwar years in Moscow and Berlin, which were determined by totalitarian regimes. Historically and as regards the respective subjects, a dark, uncanny undertone makes itself heard in Vasarely’s play with pattern repeat and irritation even in his early work. In view of its genesis on the eve of the Second World War, it is as logical as telling that the pictorial worlds designed by him in the wake of modernism are unstable and fugitive, that they oscillate and elude us.

The geometry dissolves; what was once static goes into a spin; optical shallows undermine the austerity of modernism—a diagnosis confirmed by Vasarely’s early geometric playful forays as well as by Vonal-Prim, Reytey, or the Vega works presented at the beginning of the tour through the show. Whether in the 1920 or in the 1960s, the artist’s pictorial spaces are always dynamically inviting as well as labyrinthine and problematic. Only this feeling of unease and insecurity makes the decorative surfaces of his art complete. The viewer needs to glimpse the abysses in Victor Vasarely’s room-spanning op art compositions to understand his art as a body of fascinating evidence of modernism’s project of the century. 

Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism

Press preview: 25 September 2018, 11 am
Exhibition dates: from 26 September 2018 to 13 January 2019

Curators: Dr. Martin Engler (Head of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum),
Dr. Jana Baumann (Research assistant Contemporary Art, Städel Museum)

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de

Visitor services and guided tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Opening hours: TUE, WED, SAT, SUN 10 am – 6 pm; THU, FRI 10 am – 9 pm; closed on Mondays
Special opening hours: 3 October 2018 10 am – 6 pm; 24 December 2018 closed; 25, 26 December 2018 10 am – 6 pm; 31 December 2018 closed; 1 January 2019 10 am – 6 pm

Admission: Sundays and holidays 16 EUR, reduced 14 EUR, Tuesday to Friday 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family tickets 24 EUR; free admission for children under twelve years of age; groups of at least 10 persons who would normally be charged the full admission fee: reduced admission fee per person. Groups are required to book in advance: please call +49(0)69-605098-200 or contact info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance tickets: tickets.staedelmuseum.de
Admission to the special exhibition is free for members of the Städelsche Museums-Verein.

Accompanying programme: The party celebrating the Vasarely exhibition will take place on October 27, 2018 in the Städel Museum, starting at 8:00 p.m.

General guided tours through the museum: TUE 3 pm, THU 7 pm, SAT 2 pm (not on 13 October), and 3 October, 4 pm. The number of participants is limited; no reservations are necessary. Tour tickets will be available starting two hours before each tour for 5 EUR at the cash desk of the Städel Museum or under tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

Catalogue: The exhibition will be accompanied by an eponymous catalogue edited by Dr. Martin Engler and published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. With contributions by Martin Engler, Györgyi Imre, Michel Gauthier, Jana Baumann, and Valerie Hillings and a foreword by Philipp Demandt. The catalogue will be published in a German and an English edition. 249 pages, 39.90 EUR each (museum edition).

Exhibition booklet: A booklet in German will be forthcoming to accompany the exhibition; 7.50 EUR.

Audiotour: A German and English audio tour through the exhibition will be available. The German version is spoken by the theatre, film and TV actor and Grimme Prize recipient Sebastian Blomberg. The tour is available free of charge as an app from either Google play or the Apple Store and can be comfortably downloaded to the smartphone from at home. Visitors may rent an audio guide for 4.50 EUR (two audio guides for 8 EUR) in the museum.

Digitorial®: The digitorial is available under vasarely.staedelmuseum.de as of now.

Social Media: The Städel Museum communicates the exhibition in the social media with the hashtag #Vasarely.

Jointly supported by: Kulturstiftung des Bundes and Kulturstiftung der Länder

Sponsor of contemporary art in the Städel Museum: Deutsche Bank AG

Media partners: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Handelsblatt, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main

Culture partner: hr2-kultur

Exhibition architecture: Kuehn Malvezzi

An exhibition organised by the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris

At the Städel Museum, preparations for a major special exhibition are in full swing. From 23 October 2019 to 16 February 2020, the Frankfurt museum will present a comprehensive exhibition of one of the world’s most famous artists: Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). The largest and most elaborate show in the history of the Städel to date will revolve around the special significance of German gallery owners, collectors, critics and museums for the success story of this precursor of modern art, while also illuminating his role as a decisive figure for the art of German Expressionism. It will feature some 140 paintings and works on paper, including around 50 of the artist’s key works.

After years of negotiations, the loan agreements have meanwhile been concluded. The Städel will present outstanding works from collections in Germany and abroad, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Prague and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Among the highlights will be the self-portraits from the Art Institute in Chicago and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, but also the famous paintings Augustine Roulin (Rocking a Cradle) (1889, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).

The exhibition is the first ever to take an in-depth look at Van Gogh’s œuvre in the context of its reception in Germany. Its point of departure will be a selection of major works from all phases of the Dutch painter’s career. Building on that foundation, the presentation will be devoted to Van Gogh’s significance for the development of German art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Here an important reference point will be the Städel’s own extensive Expressionist collection. Alongside well-known examples by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter and Max Beckmann, the show will also feature artists meriting rediscovery – and on whom Van Gogh had an equally formative influence –, for example Peter August Böckstiegel, Maria Slavona or Heinrich Nauen. The chief aim of this large-scale exhibition and research project is to contribute decisively to a better understanding of artistic developments in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century, while also shedding light on Van Gogh’s role as a key figure for the art of the German avant-garde.

The exhibition is being realized with support from the Franz Dieter und Michaela Kaldewei Kulturstiftung.

“Van Gogh is dead, but the van Gogh people are alive. And how alive they are! It’s van Gogheling everywhere”, wrote Ferdinand Avenarius in Der Kunstwart in 1910 to describe the fascination Vincent van Gogh’s paintings held for artists in Germany – particularly the younger ones – in the early twentieth century. This country was of decisive significance for the Dutchman’s success story. Thanks to the dedication of German gallery owners, critics and museum directors, less than fifteen years after his death – and thus earlier than in other countries – he was perceived here as one of the most prominent precursors of modern painting. The Städel and its then director Georg Swarzenski also played a leading part. In 1908, with support from its Museums-Verein, the Städel was the first public museum in Germany to purchase works by Van Gogh: the early painting Farmhouse in Nuenen (1885) and a drawing. The Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890) followed in 1912, only to be confiscated from the Städel Museum in the 1930s within the framework of the “degenerate art” campaign. Städel director Swarzenski moreover actively advocated the purchase of van Gogh’s works by other museums such as the Kunsthalle Bremen.

“At the time of his death in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890, only few of Van Gogh’s contemporaries were acquainted with his work. When the first Van Gogh exhibitions took place in Europe’s cultural metropolises around the turn of the century, the fame of his oeuvre rose dramatically. The special exhibition at the Städel Museum will show that, without the history of the artist’s reception in Germany, this development – and Vincent van Gogh’s continued popularity to the very present – would hardly be conceivable”, comments Städel director Philipp Demandt.

Curators: Dr Alexander Eiling (Head of the Department of Modern Art, Städel Museum) and Dr Felix Krämer (Director General, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf)
Project management: Elena Schroll (Curatorial Assistant, Department of Modern Art, Städel Museum)
Exhibition dates: 23 October 2019 to 16 February 2020
Press preview: Monday, 21 October 2019, 11 am

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor services and guided tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Supported by: Franz Dieter und Michaela Kaldewei Kulturstiftung, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.
With additional support from: The City of Frankfurt am Main