Images & Texts

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

From 19 September 2018 to 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.

The exhibition is supported by the Ernst Max von Grunelius Stiftung, the Rudolf-August Oetker Stiftung and the Friede Springer Stiftung. Additional support is provided by the City of Frankfurt am Main.

“The child portrait Boy with Kasper Puppet (Wolfgang Karger) was the first new acquisition since my appointment as Director of the Städel Museum, and the work of Lotte Laserstein in general has accompanied me both personally and professionally for many years. I am thus all the more pleased that our exhibition will provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the work of this important painter and introduce her to a wider audience,” Städel director Philipp Demandt comments on this exhibition project which he initiated.

The painter Lotte Laserstein made a name for herself in the pulsating city of Berlin during the Weimar Republic more than anything else through portraits of her contemporaries. In her paintings, the artist depicted the life in Berlin that surrounded her, focusing on representations of the so-called “New Woman” and captured her pictorial motifs from a decidedly female perspective. She participated in numerous exhibitions and competitions and was highly praised by art critics. Following this early recognition, however, her career ended abruptly: Due to the political conditions under National Socialism, the painter, who was a baptised Christian but declared Jewish due to her grandparents, was increasingly excluded from the public cultural scene. In 1937, she managed to leave Germany and emigrate to Sweden, where, however, she was not able to recapture her early success. Cut off from the international art scene, her work faded to a large extent from public view. It was not until 2010 that Laserstein once again became the focus of attention with the purchase of one of her major works by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Evening over Potsdam from 1930, which is also included in the Frankfurt exhibition.

“Lotte Laserstein shares the fate of many of her contemporaries, who began to build a reputation during the Weimar Republic, but whose artistic careers were severely curtailed by the Nazi system. She can be included among the so-called “Lost Generation”, since her realistically painted images were neglected by post-war research orientated toward the avant-garde. It is only since the 1990s that this extraordinary artist has received belated recognition, to which our exhibition can make a crucial contribution”, the curators of the exhibition, Alexander Eiling and Elena Schroll, emphasise.

Style and Motifs
Laserstein’s paintings stand in close stylistic proximity to the New Objectivity, but they do not quite fit into this art historical category. Although there are similarities to this art movement in terms of subject matter and attitude in the painter’s works, Laserstein’s style of painting is neither objectively undercooled nor socially critical, as is typical of the New Objectivity. Her painting style always remains realistic, with a partially late-Impressionistic, loose brushstroke and a carefully composed pictorial composition. Overall, the influence of her academic education – to which women had only just begun to gain access – is clearly recognisable in her works, which is why her style can be described as academic realism. Although traditional with regard to technique, her pictures were of great topicality in terms of content.

Lotte Laserstein’s favoured subject is the human being in all its many facets, which is why she devoted herself primarily to portraiture. In her portraits, she brilliantly depicts the people of the interwar period, such as in Girl Lying on Blue (1931) or The Mongolian (1927), whereby her works are characterised by sobriety, modernity and psychological depth. In her oeuvre, there are also motifs that speak of the enthusiasm of the time for technology and sports, although these are much fewer in number. In her portraits, Laserstein paints types from modern everyday life: athletic women, young girls putting on make-up, a motorcyclist in full gear and fashionably dressed city dwellers. The artist plays with quotes from art history and often incorporates reflections and duplications of figures. She frequently paints complex compositions, in which she also depicts herself painting in the studio to refer to her role as an academically trained artist. Furthermore, with her fashionably dressed protagonists, Laserstein drafts a type of emancipated urban woman who moves freely and confidently in the public sphere without male accompaniment. This contemporary image of the “New Woman” is of particular interest to her. Portraits of women thus comprise the greater part of her artistic production, and rarely does she paint portraits of men.

Her Model Traute Rose In addition to herself and professional models at the academy, Laserstein repeatedly portrays her long-time muse and friend Gertrud Rose (née Süssenbach), called Traute, who embodies the type of the “New Woman” as it was downright propagated in the media during the interwar years, and is thus an ideal model. Rose – like Laserstein herself – corresponds to the ideal of the times: an androgynous, athletic, emancipated young lady with bob and loose-fitting clothes. In her portraits, Rose appears as a tennis player, occasionally in double portraits alongside the artist or as a nude model in the context of the studio. In contrast to conventional representations of female models by male artists, in which the woman becomes an objectified vis-à-vis of the painter, Laserstein’s paintings testify to the close relationship between the two friends, which was based on trust and equality. This is particularly evident in At the Mirror (1930/31) and In My Studio (1928), in which Rose is depicted nude and Laserstein in the role of the painter. Especially these nudes have repeatedly led to the assumption among scholars of a homosexual love relationship between the two women, for which there are, however, no biographical indications. Laserstein maintained a close, lifelong friendship with Traute Rose, who remained in Germany, and the two corresponded extensively during the artist’s time in Sweden.

Biographical Details Lotte Laserstein, born in East Prussia in 1898, grew up in a bourgeois environment. After the premature death of her father, her mother moved with her and her younger sister Käte to their widowed grandmother in Gdansk. She received her first drawing lessons in 1908 from her aunt Elsa Birnbaum, who ran a private painting school. From 1921 to 1927, she attended the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, where she was one of the first women to complete her master studies. Through her participation in the spring exhibition of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1928, she received widespread recognition and sold her first work to a public institution, namely the Berlin City Council. The painting In the Tavern (1927) was later confiscated as “degenerate art” within the context of National Socialist propaganda.

Since the late 1920s, Laserstein participated regularly in various exhibitions. She soon succeeded in building a reputation, and the arts pages and critics wrote downright eulogistically about her art. In 1928, Laserstein participated in the competition “The Most Beautiful German Portrait of a Woman”, organized by the cosmetics company Elida in cooperation with the Reich Association of Visual Artists. Out of the 365 works submitted, the painting Russian Girl with Compact, now in the collection of the Städel Museum, was nominated for the final round and exhibited together with twenty-five works by almost exclusively male artists in the prestigious gallery of Fritz Gurlitt in Berlin, where her first solo exhibition also took place in 1931.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists, Laserstein’s nascent career ended abruptly. She was dismissed from the board of the Association of Berlin Women Artists and was only able to exhibit in 1935 within the frameworks of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Cultural League of German Jews). The small painting school, which she had run for financial security since 1927, was also forced to close. Political restrictions made her living and working conditions increasingly difficult. An exhibition in the Galerie Moderne in Stockholm in 1937 offered her the opportunity to leave Germany. Although Laserstein remained extremely productive in Swedish exile and made her living through commissioned work, she was unable to recapture her early success, and her work largely disappeared from public perception.

In Germany, Laserstein was rediscovered in 2003 through the exhibition “Lotte Laserstein. My Only Reality”, curated by Anna-Carola Krausse for Das verborgene Museum in cooperation with the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin in the Museum Ephraim-Palais. In 2010, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, with the support of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States, acquired Laserstein’s monumental key work Evening over Potsdam from 1930.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Prestel Verlag, with a foreword by Philipp Demandt and a preface by Thomas Köhler. The catalogue provides an introduction to Laserstein’s art by Alexander Eiling. Elena Schroll examines the painter as part of the “Lost Generation”, Annelie Lütgens compares Laserstein’s portraits with works by other women artists of her time, and the Laserstein expert Anna-Carola Krausse analyses the reinterpretation of traditional motifs by the artist. The catalogue also includes contributions by Kristin Schroeder, Kristina Lemke, Maureen Ogrocki, Philipp von Wehrden and Valentina Bay, who investigate Laserstein’s nudes, her exile in Sweden and her artistic marketing strategies.

After its launch at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, the exhibition will travel to the Berlinische Galerie, where it will be complemented with, among others, works created by Lotte Laserstein while in exile.

Exhibition dates: 19 September 2018 to 17 March 2019

Curators: Alexander Eiling (Head of Modern Art, Städel Museum), Elena Schroll (Assistant Curator of Modern Art, Städel Museum)

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Visitor Services and Guided Tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
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 11 am – 6 pm

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR; Sat, Sun and holidays: 16 EUR, reduced 14 EUR; family ticket 24 EUR. Free admission for children under the age of twelve. Groups of at least ten 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. Admission to special exhibitions is free for members of the Städelscher Museums-Verein.
Advance Ticket sales: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

General Guided Tours of the Exhibition: Fridays at 7 pm, Sundays at 2 pm as well as Wed 3 October 2018, Tue 25 December & Wed 26 December 2018 and Tue 1 January 2019, 12 midday. Fee: 5 EUR plus Admission (tickets are available from two hours before the tour begins, Sundays from 10 am, at the ticket desk)

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive supporting programme. An up-to-date overview can be found at www.staedelmuseum.de.

Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Prestel Verlag with 192 pages and 159 colour illustrations. With contributions by Valentina Bay, Alexander Eiling, Anna-Carola Krausse, Kristina Lemke, Annelie Lütgens, Maureen Ogrocki, Kristin Schroeder, Elena Schroll and Philipp von Wehrden. German / English. 39.90 € (museum edition).

Audio-Tour: The audio-tour through the exhibition is available in German and English. The German audio-tour is spoken by the actress and singer Meret Becker. The tour is also available as a free app in the Android and Apple stores and can be easily downloaded onto your smartphone from home. On site at the museum, an audio-guide can be rented for a fee of 4.50 EUR (8.00 EUR for two audio-guides).

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

Supporters and Partners of the Exhibition
Supported by: Ernst Max von Grunelius Stiftung, Rudolf-August Oetker Stiftung and Friede Springer Stiftung.
With additional support from: The City of Frankfurt am Main.
Media partner: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

An exhibition organised by the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, in cooperation with the Berlinische Galerie.

The Städel Museum is delighted to announce a first-rate new acquisition for its collection. The magnum opus by the German Surrealist Richard Oelze (1900–1980) represents a significant enhancement to the Frankfurt museum’s Surrealist holdings. With the aid of generous support from the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States and a contribution from the Kurt and Marga Möllgaard Foundation, the Städelscher Museums-Verein and the Städel Museum have jointly purchased the painting Archaic Fragment (1935) from a private collection. Long thought lost, the work is one of only three large-scale canvases from the artist’s most important creative period in Paris. The other two – Expectation (1935–36) and Everyday Torments (1934) – are now in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf, respectively. Following careful conservation and restoration measures, Archaic Fragment is now on view in a specially installed cabinet exhibition in the galleries showcasing the Städel Museum’s modern art collection.

“Richard Oelze painted only a handful of large-scale works in his life. All the more delighted are we that – in cooperation with the Städelscher Museums-Verein and with generous support from the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States – we were able to seize the opportunity to obtain one of these masterworks of German Surrealism for our collection”, commented Städel director Dr Philipp Demandt.

“Archaic Fragment is a telling example of Richard Oelze’s distinctive pictorial language and now, following its restoration, it shines in renewed splendour. It is an ideal enhancement to our Surrealist holdings”, added Dr Alexander Eiling, the head of the Städel Museum’s collection of modern art, who is likewise very pleased about the new accession.

In his Paris years, Richard Oelze cultivated contacts with the chief exponents of the Surrealist movement – among them André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí – whose ideas and styles left distinct marks on his oeuvre. The artists of this group were primarily interested in themes that ran contrary to human logic – their main concern was with dreams, visions and explorations of the subconscious. In Archaic Fragment, the fantastical motifs of the Surrealists combine with the precise painting style of New Objectivity, which Oelze had learned from his Dresden teachers Otto Dix and Richard Müller. And although this precision applies to even the smallest details, the depiction as a whole defies conclusive interpretation. A hybrid entity of plant, animal and human forms hovers as if alive before an imaginary landscape. It is a meeting of the familiar and the strange which, in keeping with Surrealist logic, unite to form an unsettling fabrication of the subconscious. Yet the artist also plays with erotic undertones and sparks the fears and desires that slumber in the human psyche like “archaic fragments”.

“One of the core responsibilities of a vital museum is the ongoing expansion of its collection. I am all the happier that, through the purchase of Archaic Fragment, the Städelscher Museums-Verein – the museum’s oldest and largest patron – has once again had an opportunity to contribute to the further development of the Frankfurt collection on the highest level of quality”, Sylvia von Metzler, the chairwoman of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, emphasized.

“Richard Oelze is the most important German exponent of Surrealism apart from Max Ernst. Archaic Fragment, long given up for lost, is one of his rare large-scale masterpieces. The fact that, thanks to this acquisition, the Städel’s Surrealism collection has now been crowned with such an outstanding work gives me great pleasure”, remarked Prof Dr Markus Hilgert, the secretary general of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States.

Restoration and conservation
The painting’s original materials have survived in excellent condition. The careful restoration and conservation measures by Stephan Knobloch, the Städel’s head of painting restoration, focussed on removing patches from the back, closing small tears in the canvas and removing two yellowed layers of varnish as well as older retouching. As a result, the work has been returned almost to its original state. Not only has the original colour scheme been restored, but also the perspective of the overall pictorial composition as intended by the artist. A frame with a type of moulding used frequently in the 1920s and ’30s was copied for the Oelze painting and furnished with a mounting likewise typical of that period.

Cabinet presentation
In the Städel collection, Archaic Fragment enhances another painting by Oelze – Dangerous Desire (1936), acquired back in 1979. The two works are the highlights of a newly installed cabinet presentation in the museum’s modern art galleries. With the aid of three further examples from private holdings, the presentation offers a concentrated look at Richard Oelze’s oeuvre and his independent and innovative position within the Surrealist movement. The presentation will be on view until 21 October 2018 in Cabinet 1.11.1 of the Städel’s garden wing.
Following the cabinet presentation, the painting Archaic Fragment will be on view along with some one hundred important works by international artists in the exhibition “Wilderness”, taking place at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt from 1 November 2018 to 3 February 2019. The extensive thematic exhibition will explore the multitude of different links between wilderness and art from 1900 to the present.

Brief biography of Richard Oelze
Born in Magdeburg in 1900, Richard Oelze studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 to 1925. From 1926 to 1929 he lived in Dresden; in 1933 he went to Paris. After his three-year stay in the French capital, he continued to pursue his artistic concerns, painting works that exhibit an affinity to Surrealist imagery. He was called up for war service in 1940, and following his return five years later, he began painting again, if initially with some hesitation. The decade following his first solo exhibition, which took place at the moderne galerie in Cologne in 1950, would prove be one of his most productive periods. He figured prominently at the Documenta II (1959). In 1969 he was one of three artists representing Germany at the Venice Biennale. Among his numerous distinctions is the Max Beckmann Prize of the city of Frankfurt am Main, which he received in 1978, two years before his death.
The outstanding significance of the painting Archaic Fragment is reflected in its exhibition history. The large canvas (98 x 130 cm) was featured alongside works by Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray and others in numerous major international Surrealist shows – for example the “International Surrealist Exhibition” at the New Burlington Galleries in London in 1936. It was thus precisely this painting, and the prominence it gained, that account for the status Oelze achieved over the course of the 1930s and’40s: as one of the most important exponents of Surrealism, championed by well-known art historians and art dealers alike. Max Ernst was one of Oelze’s greatest admirers.

The work in facts and figures:
Richard Oelze (1900–1980)
Archaic Fragment, 1935
Oil on canvas, 98 x 130 cm
Joint property of the Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V. and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Acquired with support from the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States and a contribution from the Kurt and Marga Möllgaard Foundation
© Estate of Richard Oelze

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Location: 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 Mondays
Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, families 24 EUR. 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

The photographer Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (b. 1938) has been devoting herself to border landscapes, places of transit and relics of past cultures for more than forty years. With the aid of thirteen extensive workgroups and altogether more than 200 works, the Städel Museum is offering the first comprehensive institutional survey of the artist’s oeuvre ever in the exhibition “Ursula Schulz-Dornburg: The Land In-Between – Photographs from 1980 to 2012”, to be presented from 4 July to 9 September 2018. Schulz-Dornburg, who was born in Berlin and now lives in Düsseldorf, devotes herself in her photos to cult and culture sites in Europe, Asia and the Near East, and above all to the visible and invisible borders of these continents and regions. Her analogue black-and-white photographs are testimonies to no-longer-existing landscapes, past political systems, cultural milieus in the process of dissolution, and expiring societies. Distinguished by ethnological curiosity and an archaeological perspective, the images are on the interfaces between documentarism and political photography, between concept art and a sense of the responsibility to provide insight. Schulz-Dornburg is interested in the marks human beings have left behind in the landscape in the course of lengthy historical processes, as well as in recent political changes of the kind brought about, for example, by the Golf Wars (between 1980 and 2003).

“Photography is one of the Städel Museum’s main focusses in terms of research and collecting alike. Ursula Schulz-Dornburg is an excellent example of the expansion of genre boundaries. Her photographs belong to a realm between documentation and concept art. One of the aims of our exhibition, which we designed in close cooperation with the artist, is to make her oeuvre perceivable in its entirety and put it in art-historical context”, comments Städel director Dr Philipp Demandt.

“One of the distinguishing features of Schulz-Dornburg’s work is that, already very early on, she travelled to places that have only turned up on the Western cultural map more recently. Sometimes we encounter oasis and desert, war and antiquity, past beauty and present destruction in one and the same picture. It is this often unbearable ambiguity that makes Schulz-Dornburg’s oeuvre as unique as it is visually powerful – the manner in which she brings together seemingly irreconcilable opposites, in terms of both aesthetics and content, without reconciling them”, emphasizes Dr Martin Engler, head of the Städel Museum’s collection of contemporary art.

The exhibition
Revolving around the artist’s aesthetic “in-between”, “The Land In-Between” unites photographs taken between 1980 and 2012 – works from the Städel collection, the artist’s own archive and private lenders. In her art, Schulz-Dornburg walks the fine line between concept art and journalistic coverage, politics and aesthetics. One of her best-known workgroups provides striking evidence of this: Transit Sites, Armenia (1997–2011), to be featured in our show. The photos focus on bus stops in post-Soviet Armenia. Here the photographer isolates her subjects from their surroundings, thus making them the sole objects of attention. Derelict modernist buildings bear witness to lost utopias.
The series Vanished Landscapes, Iraq, Marsh Arabs (1980) shows architectures doomed to extinction: Schulz-Dornburg travelled from the mud-walled houses on the Shatt al-Gharraf to those built of reed in the marshlands. Vanished Landscapes, Iraq, Mesopotamia (1980) links historical sites with the immediate present of recent wars. Her chief photographic interest is in man-made structures. For Vanished Landscapes, Palmyra, Syria (2005/2010) for example, she photographed reduced burial sites shortly before the so-called Islamic State destroyed the larger buildings. Deserts are symbols of transit areas, and it was precisely there that Schulz-Dornburg stopped off. In 15 Kilometres along the Georgian-Azerbaijani Border (1998/99) she presents us with a world that seems infinitely remote. Her fine sense of dark and light also finds expression in the Ararat series (2004–2006) – in the constant shifts between sun and clouds, rain and mist.
On the occasion of her Kronstadt series (2002), Schulz-Dornburg photographed surreal-looking metal bodies whose functions are not always obvious to the beholder at first sight. The abandoned buildings in her Opytnoe Pole (2012) and Chagan (2012) series likewise have a virtually fantastical quality about them. For her Solar Positions (1991/1992), the artist entered the interiors of chapels to translate, by photographic means, the macrocosmic movement of the earth into the microcosms of sacred architectures.

The creative process
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s series, some of which comprise several dozen photos, will be presented on the upper floor of the Städel’s exhibition annex, arranged in grid-like manner in tableaus covering entire walls. Despite their many fundamental differences, these often very extensive series share the same formal concerns as the Typologies – individual photos arranged in grids and likewise forming large-scale tableaus – carried out from the 1960s onward by the photo artists Bernd and Hilla Becher. Both oeuvres are decisively indebted to the influence of American Concept Art and Minimal Art. Particularly in the presentation, however, the differences become obvious. Schulz-Dornburg’s series often have no temporal conclusion or exhibit deliberate gaps that lend them a certain openness in terms of content and form alike. Her photographs always retain their individual character; their contextualization, however, would be nearly impossible without their serialization. Free of adherence to rigid disciplines, styles or worldviews, they occupy a realm between ethnology, archaeology, photography, documentarism, concept art and a sense of responsibility towards society.

Biographical details
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg was born in Berlin in 1938. In the years 1959 and 1960 she studied at the Institut für Bildjournalismus in Munich. In 1967 she spent time in New York, where she absorbed the influence of artists like Dan Flavin, Michael Heizer, Lawrence Weiner and Walter De Maria. She moved to Düsseldorf in 1969. From the early 1980s onward, she travelled and explored Europe, Asia and the Near East, primarily with a medium format camera and a focus on transit points, border landscapes, cultural sites and relics of past cultures. Her work is represented in the collections of such prestigious museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern in London, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Schulz-Dornburg has participated in ground-breaking group exhibitions, for example “Conflict, Time, Photography” at the Tate Modern, London in 2014. Her most recent major solo exhibitions were “From Medina to the Jordanian Border” at the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin in 2011 and “Niemandslicht” at the Kunstmuseum Bochum in 2011/12. In 2016 she was awarded the AIMIA / AGO Photography Prize of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

URSULA SCHULZ-DORNBURG:
THE LAND IN-BETWEEN – PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 1980 TO 2012

Exhibition dates: 4 July to 9 September 2018
Press preview: Tuesday, 3 July 2018, 11.00 am

Curators: Dr Martin Engler (Head of the Collection of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum), Iris Hasler (Research Assistant, Städel Museum)
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor services and guided tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de

Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am – 9 pm, closed Mondays

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, families 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 ticket sales online at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de
Admission to the special exhibition is free for members of the Städelscher Museums-Verein.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Thursdays at 6 pm and Sundays at 12 noon. The number of participants is limited; no previous reservations necessary.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive programme of events and activities. For current information on the programme, go to www.staedelmuseum.de

Exhibition catalogue: Ursula Schulz-Dornburg: The Land In-Between – Photographs from 1980 to 2012, edited by Dr Martin Engler, MACK Verlag, museum edition in German, 300 pages, 39.90 €, bookshop edition in German and English.

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition in the social media with the hashtag #SchulzDornburg.

Within the framework of the series “In the Städel Garden”, the Düsseldorf artist Manuel Franke (b. 1964) has developed an artwork of monumental dimensions – 50 metres long and 2.5 metres high – for the garden of the Städel Museum. From 20 June to 23 September, this expansive gesture will lend the Städel Garden a new and very palpable boundary between the museum and the Städelschule. Half sculpture, half painting, Colormaster F will respond to the lawn – a green surface bounded by buildings on three sides – with a curved membrane in vivid monochrome colours. An insurmountable obstacle, Franke’s object will on the one hand block the view, while on the other hand giving visitors the opportunity to experience the hill at the garden’s centre in a whole new way. Colormaster F will not only change the garden in terms of its spatial constellation, but also create a further, additional space, both open and closed, inside it. The artwork will moreover invite visitors to play, explore and pass time, thus offering an entirely new and interactive experience of the familiar Städel Garden all summer long.

“The reason we wanted Manuel Franke to carry out a work for our garden is that he consistently concerns himself with the boundaries between art and society, and we wanted to enhance the garden temporarily with one of his cross-media artistic interventions. His sculpture, which will rest on a massive foundation of sky-blue-coloured concrete, is a hybrid of industrial façade and museum, painting and sculpture, halfpipe and bench. It will prompt visitors to participate, for example by inviting them to sprawl out and relax on it”, explains Martin Engler, head of the Städel collection of contemporary art.

“The Städel Garden poses a challenge for artists because its aesthetic has already been perfectly and thoroughly thought through and it serves the museum as a kind of landmark. That’s precisely why I was happy to accept the invitation. The pink-coloured side of my wave will stretch out over the lawn like a huge sail, turning the grassy surface into a green colour field of equal chromatic intensity. On the one hand the object will close the garden in; on the other hand it will make the museum spill over into the urban space with a rapid movement in gaudy orange”, is how Manuel Franke envisions his work.

As part of the accompanying programme, Franke will engage in conversation with the French conceptual artist Daniel Buren (b. 1938) before an audience on 24 July. The dialogue will take place partly in front of Colormaster F in the Städel Garden, and partly in front of Daniel Buren’s works in the Städel collection.

Colormaster F
The artist adopted the word Colormaster from the name of a colour temperature metre of the kind employed in professional photo technology to measure colour casts in the pre-digital age. Franke has used it repeatedly; in this case the F stands for the city of Frankfurt. By choosing this title, the artist is alluding to the special significance colour holds in his work. “With colour, an object changes its identity.” Colormaster F doesn’t dictate a certain vantage point to its visitors. On the contrary, it invites them to interact with it and explore the various ways of seeing it offers, while at the same time blocking other views. What is more, Colormaster F can never be perceived in its entirety, but always consists of two irreconcilable visual experiences, depending on whether you’re sitting on the hill above the Garden Halls or approaching the museum and the artwork from the Dürerstrasse/city side. Colormaster F makes the architecture of the Städel Garden and the Städel Museum an integral element of itself by responding and relating to it.

A conspicuous aspect of Franke’s intervention is how it takes Adolf Luther’s Integration Standing Lenses (1990) into account. On permanent loan from the Adolf-Luther-Stiftung since 2013, this work is located partially on the lawn and partially on the path leading through the Städel Garden. Rather than interrupting its path from one edge of the lawn to the other, the sculpture Colormaster F will integrate the steles. Franke has repeatedly found ways of embedding other artworks in his own – in 2006, for instance, he integrated James Lee Byars’s work The Tear (1986) on the exterior wall of the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle.

Technique and production
For Colormaster F Manuel Franke is using white cement and pigment, both contributed by the Dyckerhoff company, a concrete manufacturer in Wiesbaden. Thanks to the use of blue-pigmented white cement, the concrete will shed its commonplace character and take on vivid colour. The artist is also employing industrially cambered corrugated metal sheet and high-gloss paint. The sine wave otherwise encountered primarily in agriculture or factory buildings will shine in bright pink on one side of Colormaster F and vibrant orange on the other, and thus to an extent be relieved of its unsensual, industrial quality. The artist is having the sheet metal painted with standardized colours, which will lend the surface the look of a car body.

Manuel Franke
Manuel Franke studied with, among others, Tony Cragg and Irmin Kamp at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Daniel Buren and Pontus Holten at the Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques in Paris. In his artistic practice he often undertakes interventions in space that oscillate between sculpture, installation and painting. His works are site-specific in that he consistently factors in the architectural and urban structures of the surrounding environment as well as the political, historical and social contexts. A recent work of Franke’s is Achat, a large-scale project for an underground station on the Wehrhahn line in Düsseldorf, where he used hundreds of glass panels to create a walk-in colour space with a vortex-like effect.

Franke has exhibited at such venues as the Kunstraum Düsseldorf, the Artspace Sydney and the Kunstverein Nürnberg and participated in group shows at the Kunstverein Mönchengladbach, the Villa Massimo in Rome and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. His interventions, which are usually temporary, often address the act of sight itself by obstructing views while at the same time offering new and unaccustomed ways of seeing. Characteristic features of his expansive, space-transforming installations are the painterly treatment of the surfaces and the use of bright colours.

“In the Städel Garden”
In the framework of the series “In the Städel Garden”, the Städel Museum offers its freely accessible garden grounds as a venue for changing installations, performances and events on contemporary art. Since the new presentation of the sculpture collection in the Städel Garden in 2013, the museum’s outdoor facilities have frequently served as a setting for performance and installation works by such artists as Adrian Williams (Watering Hole, 2013), Adolf Luther (Architecture as Light and Reflection, 2013), Erwin Wurm (One-Minute Sculptures, 2014), Franz Erhard Walther (Walking Pedestals and Places to Stand, 2014) and David Claerbout (with his film Die reine Notwendigkeit, 2016).


IN THE STÄDEL GARDEN
MANUEL FRANKE, COLORMASTER F

Press preview: Tuesday, 19 June 2018, 11:00 am
Exhibition dates: 20 June to 23 September 2018

Curators: Dr Martin Engler and Iris Hasler
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 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, Thu + Fri 10:00 am – 9:00 pm, closed Mondays

Admission to the Städel Garden is free of charge.

Opening
The Städel Museum will open the exhibition Colormaster F on Tuesday, 19 June 2018 at 7:00 pm with a public discussion between Manuel Franke and Dr Martin Engler. Afterwards, visitors are welcome to round out the evening over beverages and conversation in the Städel Garden.

Accompanying programme
Thursday, 21 June 2018, 6:30 pm
Evening guided tour of Colormaster F and other sculptures in the Städel Garden

Tuesday, 24 July 2018, 6:00 pm
Daniel Buren and Manuel Franke in conversation (in English)

Thursday, 6 September 2018, 6:30 pm
Introduction to the work by the artist

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition in the social media with the hashtags #ManuelFranke and # StaedelGarten.

Support: The work is being realized with support from Dyckerhoff Beton.

Frank Auerbach (b. 1931) and Lucian Freud (1922–2011) are among the most prominent exponents of post-war English figurative art. From 16 May to 12 August 2018, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings will unite major works by the two artists in a single exhibition for the first time. “Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud: Faces” will present altogether forty drawings and prints, in particular portraits that are among the most uncompromising and most innovative in contemporary art.

The two artists were close friends for nearly four decades, until Lucian Freud’s death. It was not only mutual appreciation for each other’s work that bonded them; they also shared the fate of having been born as sons of Jewish families in Berlin. Already as children, they were compelled to emigrate/flee from Nazi Germany to England. Their works are expressions of very personal vision and experience. And however different their formal approaches, Auerbach and Freud pursued surprisingly similar strategies: for weeks and sometimes years, they observed and portrayed the same people from among their circles of acquaintances. This repetition and limitation served them as means of concentration in the search for insight: into another person, into the self and into the world.

Several exceptional new acquisitions for the Städel Museum provided the occasion for this special exhibition: the Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V.’s purchase of a self-portrait drawing (Self-Portrait, 2017) by Auerbach with funds from the Jürgen R. und Eva-Maria Mann Stiftung and the etching Pluto (1988) by Freud with support from the Heinz und Gisela Friederichs Stiftung, a promised gift of selected prints and drawings by Auerbach and Freud from private holdings in Cologne, and the donation of an Auerbach printing plate by the artist and the Balakjian Estate. Further enhanced by loans from within Germany and abroad, these works form the show’s cornerstones.

“Back in 1994, the Städel Museum acquired Lucian Freud’s Large Head, and thus one of the first – if not the very first – etching by the artist for a German museum. It is a great stroke of luck that we can now enhance this print with additional works by Auerbach and Freud that have recently likewise made their way into the collection. Together they reinforce the presence of these two outstanding exponents of figurative art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, while also further heightening the notable quality of the Department of Prints and Drawings”, Städel director Philipp Demandt commented.

“From the very beginnings of their careers, Auerbach and Freud strove to gain a deeper understanding of the visible world. Their concern is not with representability, but with truth. In the process, they arrive at very different results – or, more correctly, insights – again and again. From this perspective, it is thus well worth our while to view the two artists’ so very different works together”, Regina Freyberger, the head of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings from 1750, pointed out.

The exhibition
“Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud: Faces” begins with two self-portraits: a graphite drawing by Frank Auerbach (Self-Portrait, 2017) executed with forcefully dynamic strokes tending towards abstraction, and an etching by Lucian Freud (Self-Portrait: Reflection, 1996) distinguished by concrete and descriptive lines of a virtually painterly quality. Both portraits are psychologically charged to a similarly intense degree. Formally and in terms of their critical, unsentimental self-reflection, both are typical of the two artists’ oeuvres. From the 1940s and 1950s onward, it was above all portraits that emerged from Auerbach’s and Freud’s London studios, initially in oil, and later in the etching technique as well. The prints on view in the exhibition retrace this artistic production from the 1970s onward in representative manner. Yet neither artist is a classical portraitist: commissions in the printmaking medium are rare, and none of the likenesses are of the kind intended to represent the sitter and his life achievements to posterity. Freud portrayed the British politician Lord Arnold Goodman, for example, with tousled hair, wearing yellow pyjamas (Lord Goodman in His Yellow Pyjamas, 1987). Auerbach and Freud are not interested in the public person with his specific biography, but in the human being in his mental, emotional and physical entirety, in his presence and creatureliness. It is for that reason that Freud generally showed his sitters naked and in unsparingly authentic manner. This also explains the motif of sleeping or falling asleep in the two artists’ work: the tireder the model gets, the more clearly does his or her true, undisguised face come to light. At the same time, mutual trust between the artist and his sitter is indispensable. Auerbach and Freud therefore consistently chose their models from within very small circles of familiar persons: Freud’s children posed for him often, and from the 1970s onward he portrayed his mother in more than a thousand sittings. Yet he also made likenesses of people who inspired him, for example the performance artist Leigh Bowery (Large Head, 1993) or the job centre clerk Sue Tilley (Woman with an Arm Tattoo, 1996). Much the same is true of Auerbach: his wife, the painter Julia Wolstenholme, sat for him regularly from 1958 onward (Julia, 1981, 1998, 2001), and he repeatedly portrayed his son Jake (1990, 2006) as well as various fellow artists and friends.

The creative process
Whether it is confined to the face or enhanced by a view of the body, every portrait by either of the two artists is based on a process of gaining insight by means of close, inquiring observation. Frank Auerbach draws or paints one likeness at every sitting. If it does not bear up to his critical appraisal at the next sitting, he scrapes off the paint or erases the pencil lines and starts over again on the same surface. In the etching medium, this process of constant re-seeing, re-experiencing and re-working is technically impossible. In preparation for a print, Auerbach therefore makes several sketches on paper before completing the image on the plate.
Freud proceeded differently. He began by indicating his vis-à-vis’s contours on the pre-treated copper plate before taking the etching needle in hand and working from the centre outward. He viewed his sitters from changing positions. The repetition of individual lines not only brought about plasticity and but also served to confirm statements once formulated. Occasional corrections document the artist’s gradual approximation of his subject.

Biographical aspects
Auerbach and Freud shared the tragic fate of being born as children of Jewish families in Germany and compelled to flee (Freud) or emigrate (Auerbach) from Germany in the 1930s. Freud took out British citizenship in 1939, Auerbach in 1947. The two presumably first met in 1956 at Auerbach’s first London exhibition – an art experience that made a strong impression on Freud. From the start, both artists had a deep appreciation for the art of the other. Towards the end of his working process on a particular composition, Freud frequently asked Auerbach his opinion. To produce their etchings they frequently worked with the same printer, and they moreover portrayed one another. Over the years, Freud amassed one of the largest private collections of Auerbach’s works. After his death, this collection was donated to the British nation and distributed among different museums. Two of the drawings from that bequest, now in the holdings of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, will now document the close artistic exchange cultivated by two artists for the first time in Germany. Auerbach, for his part, gave the Courtauld Institute in London nine of his Freud etchings in 2012. A further etching, Ib of 1982, still in Auerbach’s possession, is likewise on view in the exhibition. The two artists’ biographies are presented in the last room of the show along with the printmaking techniques they employed.

FRANK AUERBACH AND LUCIAN FREUD: FACES

Press preview: Tuesday, 15 May 2018, 11:00 am
Exhibition dates: 16 May to 12 August 2018

Curator: Dr Regina Freyberger (Head of the Collection of Prints and Drawings from 1750, Städel Museum)

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 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, Thu + Fri 10:00 am – 9:00 pm, closed Mondays
Special opening hours (10:00 am – 6:00 pm): 20, 21, 22 and 31 May

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, families 24 EUR. Until 21 May, admission on holidays costs 16 EUR, reduced 14 EUR; families 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. Admission to the special exhibition is free for members of the Städelscher Museums-Verein.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Fridays at 6:00 pm, Sundays at 2:00 pm; Monday, 21 May and Thursday, 31 May at 12:00 noon. The number of participants is limited; no previous reservations necessary.
Advance ticket sales online at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Catalogue: To accompany the exhibition, the Städel Museum has published a catalogue by Dr Regina Freyberger entitled Frank Auerbach und Lucian Freud. Gesichter, in German, 104 pages, 15 EUR, made possible by the Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V.

Social media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition in the social media with the hashtag #AuerbachFreud.

In the course of its systematic provenance research, the Frankfurt’s Städel Museum received an inquiry from a third party relating to the problematic provenance of Eisgang (1923), an oil painting by Max Beckmann (1884–1950). The painting is listed in the official register of cultural objects of national significance and depicts a typical Frankfurt scene with the River Main and the Eiserne Steg (iron footbridge). It was acquired in 1994 by the Städelscher Museums-Verein. It has since transpired that the original owner of the work was Fritz Neuberger, a Jewish textile manufacturer from Frankfurt, who had bought the painting directly from Max Beckmann. Neuberger and his wife Hedwig were persecuted by the National Socialists, deported, and murdered in eastern Poland. Many of the details of what happened to the picture can no longer be traced. Everything suggests, however, that the Neubergers were dispossessed of Eisgang as a result of political persecution. After many years of research by the Städel Museum and intensive discussions between the board of the Städelscher Museums-Verein and the heirs of the Neubergers, the two parties have now reached an amicable “goodwill agreement”, representing a fair and just resolution of the case in accordance with the Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated art and making it possible for the painting to remain permanently in Frankfurt. A plaque next to the painting will commemorate the tragic fate of the original owners, Fritz Neuberger and his wife.

To achieve the agreed settlement, the Städelscher Museums-Verein was given generous financial support from the German Federal Government. In a statement, the Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters, said: “Eisgang, dating from Beckmann’s years in Frankfurt, is not only a key work in the oeuvre of this great German Expressionist; with its depiction of the Eiserne Steg, a landmark of the city on the Main, it is an important and well-loved symbol of regional identity for the people of Frankfurt and beyond. It is a priority for the Federal Government to promote fair and just resolutions, in line with the Washington Principles, by supporting purchases such as this. That it has been made possible for Eisgang to remain in Frankfurt is a remarkable solution, not only for Frankfurt, but for the German museum landscape as a whole.”

In a statement Städel director, Philipp Demandt, commented: “We are pleased and tremendously grateful to have been able to reach a fair and amicable resolution which allows Beckmann’s Eisgang to remain in the Städel Museum’s collection, and thus on public view in its place of origin. In reaching this agreement, the Städel Museum and the Städelscher Museums-Verein hope to give another clear message that, even though we are not public institutions, we are committed to the principles of the Washington Declaration and are willing to face up to the responsibility of historic injustice.”

Sylvia von Metzler, President of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, announced: “Max Beckmann’s Eisgang is one of those paintings which are particularly popular with the Frankfurt public and which play a key role in shaping the unique identity of the Städel collection – and I am very glad that we have managed to retain in Frankfurt a painting whose original acquisition, in 1994, was only possible thanks to the Städelscher Museums-Verein.”

Max Beckmann: Eisgang (1923)
Measuring 47.5 cm by 59.5 cm, the canvas is one of more than a dozen views of the city painted in oils by Max Beckmann during his time in Frankfurt. The important Expressionist artist spent 17 years of his life in the city, where he developed a close friendship with the director of the Städel, Georg Swarzenski. Until he was removed from his post by the National Socialists in April 1933, Beckmann was a professor at the Städelschule art academy. His painting Eisgang shows a typical view of the Main in Frankfurt. Looking upstream from the Untermainbrücke on a quiet winter morning, it takes in the old town with St. Bartholomew’s Cathedral, the Eiserne Steg, and, on the right, the bank on the Sachsenhausen side of the river. It was a very familiar view for Beckmann – the route from his flat in Schweizer Strasse to the town centre led over the bridge. The view is not topographically exact: Beckmann’s whole attention is on the river, lying like a dark ribbon between its two banks. Great ice floes are floating down the Main, accentuating the dynamic movement of the river. The cool tones in which the landscape is rendered are heightened by the cold light of a crescent moon. The bare trees and two muffled figures on bicycles on the Sachsenhausen bank emphasise the underlying melancholy of the nocturnal, mysterious scene. One of the few winter pictures in Beckmann’s oeuvre, this is an exemplary expression of the artist’s pessimism about the modern world, often perceived as cold and unfeeling. Describing the painting when it was exhibited in 1924 at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Benno Reifenberg, wrote:
“The town is huddled in on itself; as if it were freezing, as if it were afraid of the power of the river, as if it were shrinking under the cold, pitiless grey sky. […] Ice floes are gliding down the dark river. Like strange fish with broad backs, sharp snouts. They stream round the bend in the Main. They move silently past the city, impelled by a mighty, distant force. Now and then they brush against the reddish quays. With an ominous grinding sound.”

Shown at the Documenta III exhibition of 1964, the painting has been listed in Germany’s register of cultural objects of national significance since 2011. Today, the Städel Museum houses a total of fifteen paintings, two sculptures and numerous drawings and prints by Max Beckmann. Eisgang, so important to Frankfurt, is an established part of the permanent exhibition, and is displayed in a special Beckmann Gallery.

The provenance of the work
Eisgang came originally from the private collection of the Jewish textile manufacturer, Fritz Neuberger (1877–1943), who acquired it directly from the artist before 1928, and in whose possession it definitely remained until at least December 1931. Up to this point the provenance of the painting is fully documented, but here the paper trail relating to the chain of ownership is interrupted. It was not until after the war, in 1952, that the painting reappeared in another private collection in Frankfurt. It was sold through a gallery in 1953 to a private collector, from whose heirs the Städelscher Museums-Verein acquired it in 1994. The Verein bought the picture in good faith, with funds from the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the Marga und Kurt Möllgaard-Stiftung and wide-ranging support from its members and the people of Frankfurt.

Up to now, the Städel’s research has been unable to fill a gap of around 20 years in the documented provenance of the painting, a gap which includes the years of National Socialism. The research shows, however, that Fritz Neuberger very likely lost possession of the painting during the Nazi era. The Neubergers were driven from their home in Frankfurt’s Westend neighbourhood in the summer of 1941 and in 1942, after an interim stay in the so-called ‘Ghettohaus’ at 14 Gaussstrasse, they were deported to eastern Poland and probably murdered at the Maidanek concentration camp. The couple left a son, who survived the Holocaust because his parents had managed to send him to England in 1939 with an international relief organisation. A year later he fled from there to the USA. Research conducted by the Städel wasable to trace several attempts made by the Neubergers’ son, dating from immediately after the war until as late as the mid-1980s, to prove the loss of the painting, without, however, being able to provide concrete evidence as to the circumstances of its loss and without knowing its then whereabouts. He stated, amongst other things, that as far as he remembered, the painting was still in his parents’ possession at the time of his emigration in 1939. He died in 1997 at the age of 75. As part of its own provenance research, the Städel Museum had attempted to trace possible heirs of Fritz Neuberger when it was itself approached by the heirs’ legal representatives.

Provenance research at the Städel Museum
Since as early as 2001, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt has been systematically researching the provenance of every object which was acquired during the Nazi era or which changed ownership, or might have changed ownership, during this period – making it one of the first German museums to do so. The basis for this research is the Washington Declaration, formulated in 1998 at the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, and the subsequent Joint Declaration between the federal government, the 16 German states, and all local municipalities in Germany. For every object that was acquired after 1933 and that can be dated to before 1945, the Museum attempts to examine and continues to research the history of ownership. Alongside these ongoing efforts, the administration and management of the Städel Museum decided, in 2008, to invite an independent team of researchers, in collaboration with the “Degenerate Art” Research Centre at the University of Hamburg, to examine the history of the institution during the National Socialist era. In 2011, the results of this research were issued by the Centre under the title Museum im Widerspruch, one of its series of research volumes published by the Berliner Akademie-Verlag.

So far, it has been proven that eleven objects from the holdings of paintings, drawings and prints at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and the Städtische Galerie, and five objects from the holdings of the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung were lost bytheir ownersas a result of Nazi era persecution, and these have either been returned to the owners’ heirs or re-acquired from them.

Details of work:
Max Beckmann (1884–1950)
Eisgang, 1923
oil on canvas, 47,5 x 59,5 cm
Acquired in 1994 with means provided by the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the Marga and Kurt Möllgaard-Foundation and other donors, Property of Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V. and the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Photo: Städel Museum - ARTOTHEK
© VG Bild Kunst Bonn

Almost no other artist exercised such a decisive influence on European Baroque painting as Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) did. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt dedicates a comprehensive special exhibition to the world-renowned artist, which will be on show from 8 February to 21 May 2018: “Rubens. The Power of Transformation” comprises about one hundred items—including thirty-one paintings and twenty-three drawings by the master—and explores a hitherto little-regarded aspect in his creative process. The presentation reveals how profound the dialogue was into which Rubens entered with his predecessors’ and contemporaries’ achievements and fathoms the scope of their impact on the five decades of his production. Rubens’s extensive oeuvre reflects the influences of ancient sculpture as well as that of the later art from Italy and north of the Alps, from the masters towards the close of the fifteenth century to the artists of his own day. Frequently, only a closer look will reveal how Rubens drew on the work of artists of different epochs: the exhibition offers an opportunity to comprehend the sometimes astonishing correlations in detail. The cross-genre presentation brings together paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and objets d’art. In addition to original sculptures dating from classical antiquity to the Renaissance, the show also encompasses paintings and prints by Rubens’s precursors and contemporaries, among them key works by Titian and Tintoretto, by Goltzius, Rottenhammer, and Elsheimer, as well as by Giambologna, Van Tetrode, and Van der Schardt.

The exhibition has been made possible through the financial support of Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH and Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V. It has also been sponsored by the Savings Banks Finance Group represented by Sparkassen-Kulturfonds of the German Savings Banks Association, Deutsche Leasing, Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen, and Frankfurter Sparkasse.

Städel Director Philipp Demandt: “We are able to present an extraordinary artist’s genius in all its facets to our public with this large-scale exhibition project. The comprehensive show offers a fascinating view of Baroque masterpieces that have never ceased to spellbind the viewer.”

“Rubens was one of the most prolific and fascinating artists of the Baroque age who not only influenced numerous subsequent generations in the field but also literally drank in various sources for his pictorial solutions himself. Our exhibition offers the unique opportunity to directly re-enact this creative process in our minds”, says Jochen Sander, curator of the exhibition and Head of German, Dutch and Flemish Paintings before 1800 at the Städel Museum.

The Exhibition
Structured after pictorial motifs and themes, the tour takes visitors along well-known mythological subjects such as Venus and Adonis, the Judgement of Paris or Prometheus chained to a rock but also confronts them with crucial topics of the Old and the New Testament such as the beheading of Holofernes or the Entombment of Christ. Rubens’s rendering of Christ in Crown of Thorns (Ecce Homo) (c. 1612) already exemplifies the artist’s creative process in the first room of the show: Three exhibits strikingly visualise Rubens’s transformation of an ancient sculpture depicting a centaur into Christ presented to the people. Rubens first made several drawings exploring the ancient sculpture before the motif was developed into his extraordinary representation of Christ in the painting. Completely redefining the subject iconographically, he converted his ancient model of an unbridled, brutish centaur into an image of the suffering Christ calling for the viewer’s empathy. The return to antiquity ensures an extremely astounding representation of Christ’s body, whose athletic upper part is veritably exposed, put on display.

The ancient Roman sculpture of a crouching Venus preparing to take a bath provides another impressive example: Showing the same pose but conveying a completely different frame of mind, she has not merely been transmuted into a freezing Venus, the Venus Frigida (1614) but also into the goddess of Love lamenting her lover’s death (Venus mourning Adonis, c. 1614). A similarly arresting chain of motifs unravels from a work by the Flemish painter Michiel Coxcie depicting Cains’s murder of his brother (The Death of Abel, c. 1539). Rubens had acquired the study of the slain Abel by Coxcie in the form of a drawing, which he reworked in accordance with his understanding (Abel Slain by Cain, c. 1609). A short time after, the artist altered his solution to describe a tragically failing hero who has fallen backwards to the ground in an impressive drawing (Study of a falling man, c. 1610/11). It was this study on which he directly modelled two further paintings on display in the exhibition: the brilliantly executed representation of the Death of Hippolytus (1611–1613) and his monumental Prometheus (1611/12–1618). Some years later, no lesser artist than Rembrandt (1606 – ca. 1669) would vie with Rubens’s masterpiece that excited wide admiration: His Blinding of Samson (1636), one of the Städel’s capital works, which can only be understood against the background of the artist’s study of Rubens, has, therefore, been included in the exhibition.

The direct comparison between works by Rubens and their models offers fascinating insights into the ingenious development of the master’s solutions and surprising motific metamorphoses, as well as his intense endeavours for an adequate format and the right form. The peculiarly modern, dynamic appearance of Rubens’s creations is frequently indebted to the very deliberate return to identifiable models, which the artist—in the understanding of the concept of ‘aemulatio’ crucial within his era’s theory of art—even tried to outdo. Each of the transformation processes resulted in a work that immediately enthralled the contemporary viewer and still fascinates us today.

The special exhibition is a joint project of the Städel Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, five examples from whose rich holdings of works by Rubens have travelled to Frankfurt. Works by Rubens from the Städel’s collection have also been incorporated into the presentation, among them the oil sketch The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (1628, draft for the high altarpiece of the Church of St Augustine in Antwerp) as well as several important items from its Department of Prints and Drawings.

It features works from numerous international lenders including the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the National Gallery in London, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the Vatican Museums, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

The Artist
Peter Paul Rubens was born the sixth of seven children in the city of Siegen, Westphalia, in 1577 and died in Antwerp on May 30, 1640. When still a young man, Rubens won international renown as an extraordinarily innovative artist. Yet Rubens was not only a painter but also an art theorist and collector, a respected discussion partner of European scholars and princes, and a diplomat in European employ—all this with Antwerp, the centre of his life, as a starting point. With more than fifty works in churches and museums and the Rubenshuis with its living quarters and adjacent studio, the artist and his work are still present in his hometown in an exceptional manner today. Rubens studied under three teachers, among them the Antwerp painter Otto van Veen (1556–1629). At the age of only twenty-one, he entered the Guild of St Luke, the city’s guild of painters, as a master in 1598, getting to know Antwerp’s intellectual circles. In 1600, he travelled to Italy, where he stayed for eight years. This time—and especially the ancient sculptures he became familiar with then—had a lasting effect on his work. After his return to Antwerp in 1608, Rubens was appointed court painter to Albert, Archduke of Austria, and his wife Isabella Clara Eugenia, Catholic sovereigns of the Southern Netherlands, and married Isabella Brant, the city clerk’s daughter. Rubens had become one of Europe’s most sought-after painters, who created paintings for kings and princes, political leaders and diplomats. He decided to buy a house in 1610 for his workshop and his family, which he had converted into a small Italian-style city palace. After his first wife had passed away in 1626 and the Archduke of Austria’s death, Rubens became Isabella’s adviser, travelling through Europe in diplomatic mission from 1625 to 1628 to negotiate a possible peace between Spain and England and to campaign for ending the conflicts between the United Provinces in the north and the Southern Netherlands. It was not least thanks to his skill at negotiating that the Treaty of Madrid between England and Spain could be signed in 1630. In 1630, the artist married again: Hélène Fourment, a young woman from a middle-class family, with whom he had five children. Together with his family, Rubens found his last resting place in the memorial chapel of Antwerp’s Saint James’ Church.

Exhibition catalogue and conference
The comprehensive exhibition catalogue, published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich, deals with all works presented in the two exhibitions in Frankfurt and Vienna and comprises essays by international Rubens experts who familiarise the reader with the widely varied field of subjects.

Accompanying the exhibition, an international conference dedicated to the issue Art & Catholicism in the Dutch Republic focuses on examinations of Rubens and his art.

RUBENS. THE TOWER OF TRANSFORMATION

Press preview: Wednesday, February 7, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
Exhibition dates: February 8 – May 21, 2018

Curators: Prof. Dr. Jochen Sander (exhibition in the Städel Museum Frankfurt), Dr. Gerlinde Gruber (exhibition in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna), and Dr. Stefan Weppelmann (exhibition in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna)

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, phone +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitors’ service: phone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m., Thur + Fri 10:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m., closed on Mondays
Special opening hours (10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.): Good Friday, March 30; Easter Sunday, April 1; Easter Monday, April 2; Tue, May 1; Thur, May 10; Whit Sunday, May 20; Whit Monday, May 21.

Admission: 14 euros, reduced 12 euros; Sat, Sun, holidays: 16 euros, reduced 14 euros; family ticket 24 euros; free admission for children under twelve years of age; groups of at least ten regularly paying persons: reduced admission per person. Groups are required to make previous arrangements for their visit: phone +49(0)69-605098-200 or info@staedelmuseum.de.
Admission to the special exhibition is free for members of the Städelsche Museums-Verein.

Survey tours through the exhibition: Tue, 3:00 p.m.; Wed, 1:00 p.m.; Thur, 6:00 p.m.; Fri, 7:00 p.m.; Sat, 4:00 p.m., Sun, 12:00 noon. Tours for the holidays on March 30, April 2, May 10, and May 21 have been scheduled for 4:00 p.m. The number of participants is limited.
Tour tickets will be available starting two hours before each tour for 5 euros each at the cash desk of the Städel Museum.
Early Bird Special: 10 euros (limited offer)
Advance booking: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Catalogue: A catalogue (312 pages, 304 color illustrations) will be published by Hirmer Verlag to accompany the exhibition. Ed. on behalf of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, by Jochen Sander and on behalf of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna by Gerlinde Gruber, Sabine Haag, and Stefan Weppelmann, and. Contributions by G. Bisacca, N. Büttner, A. Georgievska-Shine, G. Gruber, F. Healy, N. van Hout, D. Jaffé, E. Oberthaler, G. Prast, J. Sander, I. Slama, A. Vergara, S. Weppelmann, and J. Wood, as well as a preface by Sabine Haag and Philipp Demandt. German and English edition, 39.90 euros (museum edition).
Exhibition booklet: A booklet in German will be forthcoming to accompany the exhibition; 7.50 euros.

Städel App and audio tour: A German and English audio tour will be available. The German version is spoken by the German theatre and film actor Thomas Wlaschiha, who made an international name for himself in his role as Jaqen H'ghar in Game of Thrones. The tour may be comfortably downloaded to the Städel App at home. The Städel App is offered by the Android and Apple stores free of charge; in-app purchases for regular IOS and Android smartphones are 0,99 cent each: app.staedelmuseum.de/en.
Visitors may rent an audio guide for 4 euros (two audio guides for 7 euros) in the museum. The production of the audio tour was supported by the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung.

Digitorial: The digitorial will be available to be downloaded from mid-January at rubens.staedelmuseum.de.

Social Media: The Städel Museum communicates the exhibition in the social media with the hashtags #Rubens und #Staedel.

Conference accompanying the exhibition in Frankfurt
Art & Catholicism in the Dutch Republic
International conference of the Städel Museum Frankfurt and the Technical University of Dortmund
Thursday, February 22, 2018 – Saturday, February 24, 2018
Sponsored by: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung
All details at: www.staedelmuseum.de/en/art-and-catholicism

Two public lectures (in German) will be held in the context of the conference at the Städel Museum, Metzler Saal, as part of the series Positions on Art:
Thursday, February 22, 2018, 7:00 p.m.
Prof. Dr. Nils Büttner (State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart)
A Matter of Attitude: Art and Catholicism in Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer
Friday, February 23, 2018, 7:00 p.m.
Prof. Dr. Volker Manuth (Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen)
Rembrandt and Rubens

Sponsors and partners of the exhibition
Supported by: Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH, Städelscher Museums-Vereins e. V. and Savings Banks Finance Group (represented by Sparkassen-Kulturfonds of the German Savings Banks Association, Deutsche Leasing, Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen, and Frankfurter Sparkasse)
With additional support from: Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung, the Government of Flanders
Media partner: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wirtschaftswoche, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, arte
Marketing partner: VISITFLANDERS
Culture partner: hr2-kultur

The Städelkomitee 21. Jahrhundert (‘Städel Committee of the 21st Century’) was established exactly ten years ago in Frankfurt. This committee is unique to the Städel Museum and without parallel among German museums. It has made it possible for the Städel to continuously and strategically develop its collection of contemporary art. Thanks to the unique commitment of its members, who now number over 40, it has been able to acquire 159 important works of contemporary art for the museum’s collection in just ten years. Apart from important works by Hans Hofmann, Philip Guston, and Konrad Klapheck, the acquisitions also include many discoveries and artists outside of the established canon, such as George Karl Pfahler, Marwan, Hermann Glöckner, and Gerhard Hoehme. The Städel’s supporters celebrated the committee’s tenth anniversary yesterday at the Städel Museum with a lecture by Steffen Seibert, member of the Städel Board of Trustees and spokesperson for the German Federal Government, and a number of artist talks. The committee’s latest acquisition, purchased on the occasion of the anniversary, was unveiled to the assembled: the large-scale work Cieszowa III (1973) by the American minimal artist Frank Stella (b. 1936). The Städelkomitee 21. Jahrhundert was created in 2007 as part of the Städel Museum’s expansion by its then director Max Hollein and Sylvia von Metzler, chairperson of the Städelscher Museums-Verein.

Dr. Philipp Demandt, director of the Städel Museum, emphasized that: “An incomparable committee, one which enables us to strategically develop the Städel’s collection of contemporary art, emerged from the civic initiative of several patrons from the local community. The over 60 people who have been part of this circle over the last decade are united by their special passion for contemporary art, their close connection with the Städel Museum, and an awareness of their civic responsibility. We are deeply indebted to them for this exceptional commitment. It is a guarantee for the advancement and continuation of our collections and thus the specific identity of the Städel as the citizen’s museum of Frankfurt par excellence.”

In a statement, Sylvia von Metzler, chairperson of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, said: “The Städelkomitee’s continuous commitment has had a lasting impact. This special initiative, under the direction of Philipp Demandt and Martin Engler, has resulted in an exceptional collection which differs substantially from other collections of contemporary art in that it does not merely follow a canon prescribed by the art market, but rather sets out to determine the course of the history of contemporary art in decades to come.”

Dr. Martin Engler, head of contemporary art, said: “Thanks to the Städelkomitee 21. Jahrhundert, we were able, again and again, to acquire outstanding key works outside of the usual canon in order to complete, internationalize, and create links between important suites of works within the collection. The result is a narrative of contemporary art, which spans from post-war art up to the immediate present and contains surprising juxtapositions and connections between works.”

The Städelkomitee 21. Jahrhundert, which currently counts 45 private individuals among its members, enables the targeted acquisition of important works of contemporary art for the Städel. Those who engage themselves in this exclusive circle of the Städel’s friends afford indispensable financial support and gain unique insights into the Frankfurt museum’s strategic development of its collection. By visiting artist’s studios and galleries to purchase works, and making group trips to art biennales or important fairs and exhibitions at home and abroad, members observe developments in the art world, appraise works, and, perhaps, ultimately decide to acquire them for the Städel’s collection.

Since its establishment in 2007, the Städelkomitee 21. Jahrhundert has been able to acquire for the Städel’s collection a total of 159 works by the following artists:

Hans Peter Adamski; Peter Angermann; John M Armleder; Art & Language; Herbert Aulich; Enrico Baj; Christiane Baumgartner; Thomas Bayrle; Michael Beutler; Dike Blair; Armin Boehm; Robert Breer; Daniel Buren; Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller; David Claerbout; Thomas Demand; Jean Fautrier; Adolf Fleischmann; Otto Freundlich; Bernard Frize; Günter Fruhtrunk; Rupprecht Geiger; Isa Genzken; Hermann Glöckner; Leon Golub; Gotthard Graubner; Tamara Grčić; Philip Guston; Raymond Hains; Mary Heilmann; Philipp Hennevogl; Antonius Höckelmann; Gerhard Hoehme; Hans Hofmann; Jörg Immendorf; Per Kirkeby; Konrad Klapheck; Barbara Klemm; Peter Kogler; Arthur Köpcke; Norbert Kricke; Eugène Leroy; Markus Lüpertz; Adolf Luther; Michel Majerus; Marwan (Marwan Kassab-Bachi); Jonathan Meese; Johannes Molzahn; François Morellet; Reinhard Mucha; Otto Muehl; Olaf Nicolai; A. R. Penck; Georg Karl Pfahler; Arnulf Rainer; Tobias Rehberger; Ad Reinhardt; Daniel Richter; Michael Riedel; Larry Rivers; David Salle; Wilhelm Sasnal; Jörg Sasse; Dierk Schmidt; Julian Schnabel; Thomas Schütte; Dirk Skreber; Leon Polk Smith; Haim Steinbach; Frank Stella; Jessica Stockholder; Jan Svenungsson; Wolfgang Tillmans; Günther Uecker; Victor Vasarely; Wolf Vostell; Franz Erhard Walther; Corinne Wasmuht; Amelie von Wulffen; Erwin Wurm.