2017

The successful and prizewinning digitorial format on exhibitions (which received the Grimme Online Award 2015 in the category “Art and Entertainment,” for example) is undergoing further development on Städel Director Philipp Demandt’s initiative: As of now, the Städel Museum also offers digitorials on subjects whose visual presentation can be based on selected works from the Städel’s rich collection. Digitorials on outstanding artists with works in the Städel Museum will follow. Free of charge for the user, this extension of the Städel’s digital educational offer has been made possible by the FAZIT-Stiftung and starts with a comprehensive theme digitorial on the Reformation.

In line with this year’s quincentennial of Martin Luther’s posting of his theses, the Städel Museum’s first theme digitorial explores the consequences of the renewal of the Church for art: The shift from devotional to didactic image, the emergence of new pictorial subjects, and the interpretation of existing iconographies in the spirit of the Reformation were as much part of this development as the loss of commissions on the part of the Church and the development of a private art market. Drawing on works from the Städel’s holdings, the digitorial highlights the historical differences between the Catholic and the Protestant understanding of images and sheds lights on protagonists of the Reformation such as Luther and Melanchthon or key places like the Wartburg or Rome. The free multimedia educational offer visualizes the decisive impact of Luther’s theological positions like the priority of the word over the image on artists and illustrates how this turn has influenced the way how images are dealt with to this day.

“We are pleased that the FAZIT-Stiftung supports us to tell ‘art history’ in the truest sense of the word and to do so by relying on works from our holdings and for a wide public. Our new digitorials are aimed at contextualizing the wealth of our collection with all its subjects within a historical perspective beyond our special exhibitions and at spanning a wide arch to the present,” says Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

“Our newly conceived theme and artist digitorials serve a better understanding of art—particularly within the historical context of their time. The current anniversary year provides a perfect starting point to digitally visualize art’s function and modes of operation and how these are influenced by religious, political, and social factors,” Chantal Eschenfelder, head of the Städel’s education department, explains the new format.

The new digital educational series will be continued with an artist digitorial on Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) forthcoming in the first half of 2018. His painting Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as Nymph) ranks among the Städel’s main works and is well known to a wide public.

Theme Digitorial: Art under the Flag of the Reformation
Retrievable under http://reformation.staedelmuseum.de/en without cost, the new digitorial starts with fathoming the religious function of panel painting before the Reformation. The Städel’s fifteenth-century holdings comprise works by Rogier van der Weyden and the “Master of Flémalle”. Such paintings were revered as cult images in their era, catering to the believers’ pleasure in looking; worshipping images of saints was to bring salvation and reduce the time to be spent in the impending Purgatory.

Martin Luther refused to accept this convention. For him, salvation was solely based on inner faith and Christ. This was also why he rejected the worship of other saints. He equally opposed the selling of indulgencies practiced by the Church and came into conflict with the Pope. Luther not only relied on the power of his words for his reformatory plans; he knew about the impact of images and collaborated closely with the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder in Wittenberg. Consequently, a special focus of the digitorial is on Cranach’s works in the Städel’s collection.

The Reformation movement had a decisive impact on the understanding of art. Accordingly, the digitorial likewise centers on other countries where similar reformatory demands were brought forward at the same time. The battle for religious innovation merged with conflicts within the European power-political structure and showed its bloody side: Iconoclasm in the Protestant regions was followed by the Great Peasants’ Revolt as well as by the Huguenot Wars and the Dutch Revolt, which led to the Thirty Years’ War at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Flight and expulsion ensued, to which also artists fell victim.

The Church ceased to be an important patron of the arts particularly in Protestant regions. A free art market with private buyers emerged. Pictorial genres such as still life painting—exemplified by Georg Flegel’s or Jacob van Walscapelle’s works in the digitorial—received a new impetus. Reminding viewers of the transitoriness of life, still lifes appealed to the viewer’s virtuousness and thus fulfilled an educational function according to Protestant conviction.

Starting from Rome from the mid-fifteenth century on, the so-called Counter-Reformation formed in response to the reformatory movements in Europe. This development resulted in a fundamental reform of the Catholic Church itself. Art again came under the influence of theological decisions. The didactic style of Protestant art was countered with an emotional kind of painting that sounded out all possibilities of a mise-en-scène aimed at sensorily overpowering the believer, as works by Guido Reni or Cornelis de Vos evidence.

The consequences of the Reformation movement were still to be felt in the nineteenth century. Illustrating this, the theme digitorial explores an iconoclastic controversy in the early days of the Städelsches Kulturinstitut where conflicts between the Catholic-minded director Philipp Veit and the Protestant-oriented administration arose over acquisitions.

Finally, a work by Hermann Nitsch from 1989 demonstrates an artist’s engagement in archaic rituals and elements of Catholic religious practice. Nitsch emphasizes the shared roots of religious rituals. The digitorial clearly conveys that both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation continue to exercise their influence to this day, informing art in manifold ways.

The digitorial comprises the following chapters:

1) Art Under the Flag of the Reformation
2) From Cult Image to Didactic Image
3) The Pope Under Fire from All Sides
4) A Bible for Everybody
5) Iconoclasm, War and the Art Market
6) Visual Overpowering—the Counter-Reformation in Art
7) An Iconoclastic Controversy at the Städel

Following the example of the Städel’s hitherto produced exhibition digitorials, the theme digitorial responsively presents enlightening information, overarching contexts, and backgrounds in a new visual way. The multimedia concatenation of image, sound, and text creates a multifaceted web of contents and allows for entirely new forms of presenting, narrating, and communicating art.

THEME DIGITORIAL: ART UNDER THE FLAG OF THE REFORMATION
http://reformation.staedelmuseum.de

Authors: Anne Sulzbach, Anna Huber, Chantal Eschenfelder, Jakob Schwerdtfeger

Made possible by: FAZIT-STIFTUNG

Social media: The Städel Museum uses the hashtag #Reformation to communicate its digitorial in the social media.

Städel Museum:
Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de,
phone +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor service: phone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

The Städel Museum’s programme for 2017 kicks off with an exhibition looking at the representation of spatial concepts in drawing and printmaking. From 15 February to 14 May, "Into the Third Dimension: Spatial Concepts on Paper from the Bauhaus to the Present" will be shown in the Exhibition Hall of the museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings. The show examines how such things as delineation, form, and volume, ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ – characteristics that define space and aid orientation – are represented in drawing and printmaking, in essence on flat, two-dimensional surfaces. The exhibition takes visitors on a tour beginning with the geometric compositions created in 1923 by El Lissitzky and László Moholy-Nagy, through to examples of printmaking in contemporary conceptual art. It encompasses works by a total of 13 artists, including Lucio Fontana, Eduardo Chillida, Sol LeWitt, Blinky Palermo, James Turrell, and Michael Riedel. Lithographs depicting Constructivist perspectival representations are displayed alongside embossed prints that emerge out of two-dimensional flatness. Slits revealing imaginary spaces are juxtaposed with designs for wall pieces. Prints evoking three-dimensionality, created by figures of Minimal Art, space art, and light art, can be seen alongside chalk drawings, foldings, and collages by 20th century sculptors. The exhibition does not feature preliminary sketches or documents written in the wake of the artworks themselves. Rather, it features independent works in which artists have executed their spatial concepts within the formal parameters of techniques employed in printmaking and drawing. The exhibition brings together important sheets from the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, selected works from the Deutsche Bank Collection at the Städel Museum, long-term loans from the Commerzbank AG, and loans from a private collection.

"Many important artists have used the two-dimensional medium of paper to explore the theme of space and three-dimensionality. The fact that our own collection has provided almost the entire content of the exhibition is testament to the high-calibre quality it encompasses," said the director of the Städel, Dr. Philipp Demandt.

"A close examination of the drawers of our Department of Prints and Drawings reveals that it also includes a number of sculptures," said exhibition curator, Jenny Graser. "During the 20th century, many artists set about challenging the boundaries between the artistic media. The differences between sculpture, drawing, and printmaking consequently became less pronounced." Over seven chapters, the special exhibition presents a wide variety of approaches to the representation of space on paper, in turn highlighting both differences as well as links underscoring works that span decades.

The start of the exhibition invites visitors to ponder a question taken from "Art and Space" (1969) by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). This work undertakes to determine what distinguishes an artistic investigation of space from one predicated upon mathematical and physical laws. The first chapter of the exhibition immediately breaks down established preconceptions of space. Serving as a prelude to the exhibition are two portfolio works outlining utopian spatial concepts, created respectively by El Lissitzky (1890–1941), a Russian avant-garde artist, and László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), a Hungarian artist and professor at the Bauhaus. Over the course of the 1920s, Lissitzky developed a model for an idealized and universal space based upon notions of measurability grounded in the laws of mathematics. Exhibiting no boundaries, this space is open, undefined. The characteristic features of this spatial structure can be observed in Lissitzky’s portfolio of graphic art, "Proun" (1923). During the same period, Moholy-Nagy was also working on a portfolio of prints, although his focus was upon the phenomenon of light. His investigations into the multifaceted nature of the visual effects engendered by transparency are captured in a portfolio of six lithographs, entitled "Constellations" (1923). The medium of lithography, notable for its wealth of shades and subtle differentiation of tone, enabled the painter to pursue his investigations of transparency by employing what was for him an entirely new technique.

The exhibition’s second chapter looks at the work of artist Hermann Glöckner (1889–1987), a native of Cotta near Dresden. One seemingly simple act of construction, the process of folding, effectively describes the artistic practices that defined his entire body of work. In his "3 Phases" series (1980), he repeatedly folded a sheet to create forms and coloured the resulting surfaces with paint. Glöckner’s investigation of three-dimensional structures formed out of flat surfaces was not limited to paper and canvas, but also employed plastics, as is evident from the work entitled "Pair of Symmetrical Bodies Made from Folded Elements" (1968).

The Constructivist approaches outlined in the first two chapters of the exhibition lead on directly to the linear constructions created by the German sculptor Norbert Kricke (1922–1984) and the American artist Fred Sandback (1943–2003). Kricke used his drawings to investigate the free movement of the line in space. He took the line, typically associated with the medium of drawing, and made it a feature of sculptures created out of bent steel wire. In his quest for a sculptural body lacking solid mass or interior, Fred Sandback similarly found recourse in the line. For his first sculpture, created in 1967, he traced the outlines of a plastic body with steel wire and rubber cords, thus reducing the object to its graphic substance. In the same year, he expanded his sculptural work to incorporate walls and ceilings, stretching cords so that they formed a wide variety of u-shapes, diagonals, right angles, triangles, trapezoids, and polygons. In his portfolio "Twenty-Two Constructions from 1967" (1986), the artist illustrates how he adopted the serial principle and a wide variety of modules.

The clear formal language of geometric figures and the serial principle beloved of Minimal Art continue into the next chapter of the exhibition, where visitors can see prints by Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) and James Turrell (born 1943), who recreate the appearance of three-dimensional bodies primarily through the use of colour and gradations of brightness. LeWitt undertook experiments with grid and spatial structures, and created nearly 300 printmaking projects. Since 1982, the artist has directed the bulk of his energies towards creating representations of three-dimensional forms, to which the linoleum cuts from his 2001 series entitled "Distorted Cubes" (A–E) are testament. The three-dimensional appearance of the distorted cube depicted in this work is due entirely to the visual effect elicited by its use of colour. Since the mid-1960s, the American artist James Turrell has used nothing but projected light to explore the illusionary three-dimensionality of geometric bodies. The aquatint series "Still Light" (1990–1991) grew out of Turrell’s Projection Pieces (1966–1967), a work in which light was cast in the shape of geometric bodies against the corners of darkened rooms. Depending on the spectator’s position relative to the artwork, this created the impression of a dazzlingly luminous object, which would either appear to be positioned on the floor or floating above it. Each of the four prints displayed in the exhibition respectively adopt one of the abstract forms featured in "Projection Pieces": triangle, cube, trapezoid, and rectangular bars.

The sculptural qualities of etching are lent their full expressive potential in the embossed prints created by the Italian sculptor Giò Pomodoro (1930–2002) and the Argentine-born artist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968). Lofty arches and deep furrows pervade Pomodoro’s prints, which seem reminiscent of mountain ranges and rock formations. The reliefs that appear in Lucio Fontana’s etchings from 1964 are characterized by thick layers of dried paint. These works on paper allow both artists to blur the clear distinctions between sculpture and the graphic arts by playing with volume, height, and depth. The embossed prints are juxtaposed with works by the artist Michael Riedel (born 1972 in Rüsselsheim), whose spatially-constructed works encompass nearly every medium, including drawings on tracing paper, fabric wall-hangings, and lettering that covers the surfaces of entire rooms.

The capacity of light and colour to create the appearance of space is a theme that is followed up in the fifth chapter. Like Moholy-Nagy before him, Blinky Palermo (1943–1977) also set about investigating the appearance of space brought about by means of transparent, layered paint-forms. While Palermo’s prints are laid upon delicate, permeable layers of colour, the abstract forms of the "Red Yellow Blue" series of screen prints by his friend Imi Knoebel (born 1940) are printed on thick, opaque layers of paint. The smooth painted surfaces adorn the paper to create a relief made up of concave and convex forms, superimposed on top of each other, and thus transplanting the three-dimensional layers of Knoebel’s wall pieces to a flat surface.

The sculptural qualities of etching are lent their full expressive potential in the embossed prints created by the Italian sculptor Giò Pomodoro (1930–2002) and the Argentine-born artist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968). Lofty arches and deep furrows pervade Pomodoro’s prints, which seem reminiscent of mountain ranges and rock formations. The reliefs that appear in Lucio Fontana’s etchings from 1964 are characterized by thick layers of dried paint. These works on paper allow both artists to blur the clear distinctions between sculpture and the graphic arts by playing with volume, height, and depth. The embossed prints are juxtaposed with works by the artist Michael Riedel (born 1972 in Rüsselsheim), whose spatially-constructed works encompass nearly every medium, including drawings on tracing paper, fabric wall-hangings, and lettering that covers the surfaces of entire rooms.

The final chapter, and highlight of the exhibition, is dedicated to Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002) and his artistic/philosophical exchanges with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). "Art and Space" (1969), a book of collages by Chillida illustrating a text written by Heidegger, achieved particular fame. These collages symbolized Chillida’s spatial concept as formulated in the second and third dimension: spatial transgressions and reductions, the relationships between volume and form, fragmentation and dynamism, emptiness as a material with which to create space. Accompanying the book is a vinyl record containing a reading of Martin Heidegger’s text. Visitors have the opportunity to listen to this recording at an audio-station in the exhibition.

Into the Third Dimension. Spatial Concepts on Paper from the Bauhaus to the Present

Curator: Jenny Graser (Städel Museum)
Exhibition duration: 15 February to 14 May 2017
Press preview: Tuesday, 14 February 2017, 11 am

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de
Telephone: +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun & public holidays: 10 am – 6 pm, Thu & Fri: 10 am – 9 pm, Mon: closed
Special opening hours: Fri, 14 April, 10 am – 6 pm; Sun, 16 April, 10 am – 6 pm; Mon, 17 April, 10 am – 6 pm; Mon, 1 May, 10 am – 6 pm

Admission: 14 euros; concessions: 12 euros, family ticket: 24 euros; free entry for children under 12; groups of more than 10 regular-admission paying people: reduced per person rate. Groups must give notice of visit in advance by calling +49 (0)69-605098-200 or emailing info@staedelmuseum.de
Pre-sale tickets: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Introductory tours of the exhibition: Thu 6 pm and Sun 2 pm (price of tour included in admission).

Catalogue: A catalogue, written by Jenny Graser, is due for release from the Städel Museum, in German, 52 pages, priced 9.90 euros.

Social Media: The Städel Museum posts updates on the exhibition on social-media platforms using the hashtags #DritteDimension and #Staedel.

From 27 April to 13 August 2017, the Städel Museum is staging a comprehensive survey on the Becher Class at the Düsseldorf art academy and the major paradigm shift in the medium of artistic photography with which the Bechers and their students are associated. With the aid of some 200 photographs by Volker Döhne, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Tata Ronkholz, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth and Petra Wunderlich – a group of whom some enjoy international renown and others are due for rediscovery –, the exhibition will examine the influence exerted by Bernd and Hilla Becher on their students at the Düsseldorf school. What unites the students’ works with those of their teachers? How do they differ? Is there really such a thing as the “Becher School”, or is it ‘merely’ a matter of several highly successful photographers who happened to be studying at the ‘right place’ at an especially propitious moment in history? And how have those artists influenced our present conception of what a picture is? Taking the artist duo’s work as a point of departure, the exhibition “Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class” will acquaint viewers with the radical changes in the mesium of artistic photography that became manifest in the works of the Becher pupils in the eighties and above all the nineties, and investigate the art-historical impact of this development up to the very present. It will feature major large-scale works as well as key early endeavours by the members of what is presumably the most influential generation of German photographers in the field of fine art.

The students of the first in a long line of Becher Classes at the Düsseldorfer art academy introduced elementary changes to contemporary art’s aesthetic, media and economic contexts. They not only contributed decisively to shaping international photography in the 1990s, but also fundamentally redefined the status and perception of artistic photography in general. Their works can be considered as one of the most self-confident emancipations of photography as art in the mediums history, while at the same time reflecting the (not merely digital) moment when the boundaries between the media dissolve.

The presentation is being sponsored by the DZ BANK AG.

“Bernd and Hilla Becher’s first – meanwhile world-famous – students played a tremendously important role in establishing photography as an expressive medium on a par with other art forms. The nine artists featured in our show occupy a realm where the distinction between painting and photography is no longer clear. The permeability of the boundary between the media is deliberate in their work, and in that respect they mirror one of the key focuses of the Städel Museum’s collection of contemporary art”, observes Städel director Dr Philipp Demandt.

And exhibition curator Dr Martin Engler adds: “What the teachings of Bernd and Hilla Becher sparked off – and their students developed further – is a new conception of the artwork according to which the boundaries between sculpture, painting and photography dissolve in terms of media and aesthetics alike. In other words, in the very moment in history when photography emancipated itself to become an independent medium, it sounded its own death knell.”

The founding of a chair for artistic photography at the Düsseldorf art academy in 1976 provided perhaps the single most important impulse for a change in how the medium of photography was perceived. In close cooperation with his wife Hilla Becher, Bernd Becher held that chair until 1996. Even before their appointment to the Düsseldorf school, the Bechers had been taking pictures of historical industrial architecture, subscribing to a work concept that exceeded the scope of a common documantary approach in photography. They portrayed mining headframes, blast furnaces, gas tanks, water towers and other testimonies to a vanishing industrial culture – frontally, in central perspective, with fascinating depth of field, and where possible before the backdrop of a uniformly grey sky. They arranged the individual shots in grids to form large-scale tableaus they called typologies. The concern here was no longer merely the illustration of reality, but its perception. Reality could no longer be depicted singly, but only in a multiplicity of simultaneous images. From the formal aesthetic point of view, the staging of the pictorial subjects was now far more than documentary in nature. The affinity to minimal and concept art – evident in the rigour of the pictorial vocabulary, the industrial aesthetic and the new perception of a work in stages – is unmistakable.

Especially in their early work, the students of the first Becher Class explored their teachers’ artistic strategy with great intensity. Yet as they continued to pursue it in the nineties, they did so ever more independently, and in their own highly individual styles. With the aid of various strategies in terms of scale, presentation and motif, and not least of all with abstract pictorial inventions provoked by digital image techniques, they took the interpenetration of the mediums of painting and photography to an extreme. The result was a new concept of the picture that blurs aesthetic and media distinctions. “The dissolution of media boundaries, but also the use of technical innovations, are characteristic of the works of the first Becher Class. It is here that the impact of a changing media culture is felt”, explains Dr Jana Baumann, the co-curator of the exhibition.

A show devoted to such a complex phenomenon on the one hand, and such productive teaching activities on the other, must inevitably be limited in scope. “Photographs Become Pictures” concentrates deliberately on the students of the early years of the Becher Class, beginning with Höfer, Döhne, Hütte and Struth in 1976 and ending with the completion of Gursky’s and Sasse’s studies in 1987/1988. In retrospect, it is precisely in the heterogeneity of the first Becher Class – with its wide range of approaches that have influenced our present-day understanding of the pictorial image – that the success of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s teachings is evident.

Candida Höfer (b. 1944) is known above all for her pictures of public interiors such as libraries, universities, museums and waiting rooms. Nevertheless, the purely documentary aspect is ultimately of secondary importance to her, as is also true of her teachers. Particularly when she turned to colour photography, she began producing iconically clear shots of meaning-charged interiors extremely striking in their rigorous aesthetic. In composition, repetition and rhythm as well as the sculptural emphasis, Höfer’s formal staging of her interiors is reminiscent of the Becher typologies.
A distinct affinity to the typologies is also evident in early street shots by Thomas Struth (b. 1954), such as West Broadway, Tribeca, New York (1978) or Sommerstrasse, Düsseldorf (1980). He proceeded in a manner similar to his teachers, but broadened his spectrum of motifs. He is concerned in his work with cultural structures; in addition to streets he also depicts museums or religious cult sites and portrays families. With the aid of social and ethnological allusions he reveals orders and interrelationships, thus achieving a universal survey of human and their lifeworld in imagery.
Petra Wunderlich’s (b. 1954) black-and-white series depict details of churches or quarries that the artist has introduced to a new, abstract compositional framework. By this method she reduces architecture visually to its stereometric tectonics in such a way that elementary architectonic forms unexpectedly emerge from the “broken” surfaces of nature. Wunderlich’s photographs, like those by the Bechers, can be read as sociological and historical testimonies.
The workgroups of Volker Döhne (b. 1953) closely resemble Bernd and Hilla Bechers’ typologies with regard to concept and motif alike. He developed series such as Small-Scale Iron Industry (1977/78) or Small Railway Bridges and Underpasses in the Bergisches and Märkisches Land (1979). With his experimental Colour (1979) series, he then emancipated himself from his teachers.
Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997) was interested primarily in factory gates, shop windows, beverage kiosks and snack bars, which she photographed in the even light of grey days. Many aspects of these works are strongly reminiscent of the Becher photographs: the consistent placement of the subject at the pictorial centre, the unchanging size of the prints, but also the serial, typologically comparative approach.
Thomas Ruff (b. 1958) is likewise deeply indebted to his teachers’ serial method, which we encounter in his work in ever-different formulations. His portraits as well as the strongly enlarged nocturnal shots of, in part, found material, convey his fundamentally sceptical attitude towards photography’s claim to truth and documentation. His persistent investigations of new pictorial sources and technologies are perhaps the most impressive demonstrations of the manner in which Ruff continues the approach of Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Axel Hütte’s (b. 1951) early architectural details investigate social situations using a mode of photographic expression distinguished by distance and anonymity. Within this context, he devotes himself as much to spoiled landscapes as to supposedly untouched nature which nevertheless has always been formed by human intervention. A conspicuous aspect of his work is the strong reference to historical landscape painting, whose formal compositional principles he both copies and deconstructs. Whereas the Bechers directed their attention to the sculptural or conceptual potential of their pictures, Hütte focusses on painting as the leading medium of modern art.
Jörg Sasse (b. 1962) initially devoted himself to highly artificial and at the same time prosaic arrangements of petit-bourgeois domestic culture. His later “tableaus” represent a virtual antithesis to the reductive rigour of these early works. Using digital and analogue techniques alike, he began processing found pictures as well as images of his own making, in which context he blurred the distinction between painting and photograph beyond recognition.
Andreas Gursky’s (b. 1955) early photographs are likewise characterised by a keen interest in everyday surroundings – the private as well as the public sphere, the context of work as well as leisure time. Like Sasse, he investigates the aesthetic boundary between photographic and painterly image production. By means of digital manipulations he uses to duplicate and mount the pictorial motif to the point of abstraction, he creates perplexing pictorial architectures that merge construction and reality in large-scale colour prints.

The development of the Becher Class shows how concept art’s expanding notion of the artwork led to a new concept of the pictorial including photgraphy. What the teachers introduced in rudiments was taken by their students and the following generation of artists to a momentous change in the picturing of reality. The realization that photography cannot reproduce reality impartially does not detract from the medium. On the contrary, it means an enhancement in terms of artistic potential. What is more, the lack of focus in the portrayal of reality – in the literal and figurative sense alike – enriches photography’s complexity. It is not least of digital changes that enables innovative pictorial invention. Yet the boundaries of the photographic image also became fluid in the development from individual work to typology and series, and from detail to overall image. The answer to all questions about the significance, classification, doctrine and conception of what we refer to as the “Becher School” can thus be found in an insight as simple as it is surprising: in the very moment in history when photography emancipated itself to become an independent medium, it sounded its own death knell.

Photographs become Pictures. The Becher Class

Featured artists: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Volker Döhne, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Tata Ronkholz, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth, Petra Wunderlich

Curator: Dr Martin Engler, Head of the Collection of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum
Co-curator: Dr Jana Baumann, Städel Museum
Exhibition dates: 27 April to 13 August 2017
Press preview: Wednesday, 26. April 2017, 11 am
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt

Catalogue: To accompany the exhibition, the Hirmer Verlag is publishing a catalogue with a foreword by Philipp Demandt, essays by Alexander Alberro, Jana Baumann, Martin Engler and Steffen Siegel, and texts by Lukas Engert, Iris Hasler, Markus Kramer and Kristin Schrader. 256 pages and approx. 178 illustrations. In German. 34.90 EUR (museum edition)

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10 am – 6 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am – 9 pm, Mondays closed
Special opening hours: 1 May, 10 am – 6 pm; 25 May, 10 am – 6 pm; 4 Jun, 10 am – 6 pm; 5 Jun, 10 am – 6 pm; 15 Jun, 10 am – 6 pm
Admission: 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, families 24 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age. Groups of at least ten persons: reduced admission 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.

Digitorial: Starting on 5 April 2017, an interactive digitorial, elaborately designed to provide comprehensive insights into the exhibition, will be available at becherklasse.staedelmuseum.de. The digitorial is being made possible by the Aventis Foundation.

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

General guided tours of the exhibition: Thu 7 pm, Sat 4 pm and Mon, 1 May, Thu, 25 May, Mon, 5 Jun, Thu, 15 Jun 4 pm. The number of participants is limited.

Sponsored by: DZ BANK AG

From 22 June to 10 September 2017, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings will devote its exhibition hall to the diversity of nineteenth-century French lithography. The invention of this entirely new method of “stone printing” at the end of the eighteenth century ushered in a new era in the reproduction of images. In comparison to older printmaking methods, the range of expressive means offered by lithography was wider, the printing process faster, and the editions larger. In France, prominent artists began experimenting with the new technique around 1820, and over the course of the nineteenth century decisively expanded its artistic possibilities.
The spectrum of works on view includes eloquent compositions by Théodore Géricault, one of the rare lithographs Goya produced during the 1820s in exile in Bordeaux, Eugène Delacroix’s Goethe and Shakespeare illustrations and Honoré Daumier’s comments on politics and society in the form of newspaper caricatures. The show also features Édouard Manet’s virtuoso inventions, Symbolist works by Rodolphe Bresdin and Odilon Redon, and masterworks of colour lithography by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the “Nabis” Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard dating from the end of the nineteenth century. The works on display, numbering about ninety in all, represent highlights of this century and technique and provide insights into the superb holdings of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings. Fifteen new acquisitions of the past years are also on exhibit.

“Our summer exhibition of masterworks of nineteenth-century French lithography shines a spotlight on the considerable quality of the Städel Museum’s collection of prints and drawings. At the same time, it offers a striking impression of our continual efforts to expand our holdings in this area”, comments Städel director Philipp Demandt.

Martin Sonnabend, head of the collection of prints and drawings to 1750 at the Städel Museum, adds: “It is impossible to fully grasp the rich manifestations of nineteenth-century French artistic lithography without an awareness of the technical, economic and artistic advantages of this completely novel method for producing and reproducing images. One of the exhibition’s chief aims is therefore to shed light on the relationships between the works and their production so as to sharpen the viewers’ perception of these works.”

The technique
Alois Senefelder of Munich invented lithography in 1798. Unlike relief and intaglio printing (e.g. woodcut and engraving), it is a planographic method. The areas to be printed and those not to be printed are on the same plane, and separated from one another chemically, through the differing qualities of fat and water. In the nineteenth century, finely pored limestone – which possesses all the physical properties required for the process – was used as a printing plate. The artists drew the image directly on the polished stone surface. As they could choose freely between crayon, pen or brush, they had a wide range of expressive possibilities at their disposal. What is more, because lithography allowed the fast and efficient production of large editions, it played a significant role in the industrial mass reproduction of images that developed over the course of the nineteenth century. At first it was used primarily to print maps and sheet music (Senefelder himself was a singer, musician and composer), and then – in the early nineteenth century – increasingly for pictorial images, especially in the areas of illustration, caricature and reproduction. The first artistically significant lithographs originated in the second decade of the century, above all in France.

The exhibition
“Géricault to Toulouse-Lautrec. French Lithographs of the Nineteenth Century” begins with Francisco de Goya (1746–1828). Goya was already over seventy when he first employed the new printmaking technique for his art. In 1824 he had retreated to Bordeaux in Southern France to escape the repressions of the Spanish restoration government. There he produced the four sheets of the Bulls of Bordeaux series (1825), his only lithographs ever to be published in an edition (of 100 copies each). Goya used crayon to draw directly on the stone, and his Bulls are among the early masterworks in the new technique. Thanks to an acquisition made in 2013, the Städel museum is fortunate enough to have one of these rare and much sought-after lithographs in its holdings.
Over the course of his brief career, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) produced nearly eighty lithographs in addition to his paintings and drawings. In many cases he used the medium for experiments in printmaking, as was the case with the monumental Retour de Russie (Return from Russia, 1818). His rare Boxeurs (Boxers) – one of Géricault’s early print masterpieces – dates from the same year. In it the artist, who outspokenly advocated the liberation of slaves, depicted the black and the white boxers as equal contenders. During his prolonged stay in London in 1820 and 1821, Géricault had his series of Various Subjects (1821) published by Charles Hullmandel (1789–1850), a prominent pioneer in the field of lithography.
After Goya and Géricault, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) is the third prominent artist figure among the early lithographers. The painter began creating his first dynamic and innovative works in the technique around 1825. In the context of his lithographic endeavours, he was drawn to demonic aspects in Shakespeare and Goethe (he produced 17 lithographic illustrations on the latter’s Faust in the 1820s alone) as well as to the beauty and ferocity of wild animals, as seen, for instance, in Lion de l’Atlas (Atlas’s Lion, 1829).
The invention of lithography brought in its wake a flowering of a type of topographical illustration known as the travel picture. Influenced by English examples, the genre began to spread in France around 1820. The lithography technique permitted the quick and economical production of scenes of famous and beautiful sights with the appearance of great authenticity – even to the point of virtually photographic realism – as well as their publication in, for example, the impressive Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France (Picturesque and Romantic Journeys in Old France). The aim of these volumes was to publish all of France’s monuments of nature and art. After acquainting the visitor with travel pictures by such artists as Richard Parkes Bonington (1802–1828) or Eugène Isabey (1803–1886/1887), the exhibition turns to the genre of newspaper illustrations. Particularly in the areas of illustration and caricature, the new printmaking technique enabled skilled draughtsmen to market striking images in the form of prints with little effort. The most prominent and diverse exponent of the art of caricature in nineteenth-century France was undeniably Honoré Daumier (1808–1879). He never enjoyed academic training; instead, it was lithography and the emergence of the illustrated satirical newspaper that paved his way to a career as a newspaper caricaturist that earned him a living for more than four decades. Whereas he initially concentrated on political topics, a tightening of the press laws later compelled him to take up genre depiction. His œuvre encompasses a staggering 4,000 lithographs, distinguished as much by their contemporary historical character as by their high and timeless artistic value.
Although Édouard Manet (1832–1883) worked with the lithography technique only briefly, his works in this medium exhibit a remarkable degree of idiosyncrasy and the utmost formal liberty. This is evident in, among other examples, Les courses (The Races, 1872) and the Portrait of Berthe Morisot (1872).
Odilon Redon (1840–1916), an exponent of Symbolism, produced a total of some 200 lithographs that represent a decisive step forward in the development of the printmaking technique as an artistic medium in its own right. Particularly worthy of note is his development of the blacks – which he endowed with an unmistakable, velvety materiality – as a special strength and distinguishing feature of lithography. A striking case in point is his Pégase captif (Captive Pegasus, 1889).
The emergence of colour lithography at the end of the nineteenth century introduced new impulses to the artistic exploration of the medium. One chief factor in the renewed appreciation of art prints was the growing interest in culture within the rapidly developing metropolitan society of Paris. Even people of more modest means began to collect art, and in that way to partake of contemporary art production. The art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1865–1939) responded very cleverly to the needs of the new clientele, and in the 1890s persuaded both Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) and Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) to work with colour lithography. In the same decade, Vollard also commissioned four young artists – Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), Maurice Denis (1870–1943) and Ker Xavier Roussel (1867–1944) – each to produce a lithograph portfolio with the aim of acquainting a larger public with their work. Bonnard’s portfolio, entitled Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris (1895–1899), is made up of prints showing everyday segments of reality and situations of an unspectacular nature but possessing the charm and gentle humour of intimacy. Vuillard’s Paysages et intérieurs (1899) series manifests his well-developed sense of surface structures that contributes decisively to the impression of density and concentration while at the same time never taking on the character of material. The exhibition features the complete series by Vuillard, thirteen prints in all, as well as excerpts from the portfolios by Bonnard, Denis and Roussel.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) brings the presentation to a close – an artist who executed an impressive 350 colour and black-and-white lithographs. He considered lithography a means of artistic expression entirely on a par with painting, and it contributed more to his fame during his lifetime – and his popularity ever since – than his painted works. In general, Toulouse-Lautrec was little interested in the distinction between free and applied art: he produced his lithographic works for use as posters, menus or theatre programmes as well as for independent editions that sold to a growing circle of devotees.


Géricault to Toulouse-Lautrec. French Lithographs of the Nineteenth Century

Curator: Dr Martin Sonnabend (Head of the Collection of Prints and Drawings to 1750, Städel Museum)
Exhibition dates: 22 June to 10 September 2017
Press preview: Wednesday, 21 June 2017, 11 am

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@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 euros, reduced 12 euros, families 24 euros; free admission for children under the age of twelve. Groups of at least ten persons: reduced admission 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.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Sun 2 pm. The number of participants is limited; no prior booking required.

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

From 13 September 2017 to 14 January 2018, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt will be presenting two outstanding artists – Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) – in an exhibition that is the first in Germany to bring these key modernist masters together. At the heart of the special exhibition “Matisse – Bonnard. ‘Long Live Painting!’” is the friendship between the two French artists which lasted for over forty years. Both painters shared a preference for the same range of subjects: interiors, still lifes, landscapes and the female nude. With a selection of more than 120 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, the exhibition opens a dialogue between Matisse and Bonnard and offers new perspectives on the development of the European avant-garde from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War. The selection of works is enriched by a series of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who visited the two painters in their country houses on the French Riviera in 1944.

For this year’s major autumn show, the Städel has been able to secure a wide range of outstanding loans from internationally renowned collections, among them the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Also on display will be a host of major works from private collections, which are not normally accessible to the public. An absolute highlight among these are the two paintings which the artists owned from one another: Pierre Bonnard’s Evening in the Living Room (1907, private collection) and Henri Matisse’s The Open Window (1911, private collection). They are being shown together for the first time here in Frankfurt. Another exhibition highlight is Matisse’s Large Reclining Nude of 1935, on loan from the Baltimore Museum of Art, which has not been seen in Germany for more than thirty years. This iconic nude was a milestone on the artist’s journey towards an aesthetic of highly simplified forms and shows his studio assistant and last important model, Lydia Delectorskaya. It is very likely that the painting was inspired by Bonnard’s Reclining Nude against a White and Blue Plaid (ca. 1909), which it closely resembles in composition, and which has been in the collection of the Städel Museum since 1988. The opportunity to show these two paintings in dialogue was key to the planning of this project.

The exhibition is sponsored by the multinational bank Société Générale and supported by the Städelscher Museums-Verein as well as the Georg and Franziska Speyer Foundation.

“Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard are represented in our collection by two marvellous paintings: a nude by Bonnard and a still life by Matisse,” says Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum. “Taking these two paintings as the starting point, our main exhibition for this year reveals a visual interplay between these two artists, whose influence on each other becomes unmistakable when their works are seen side by side. The exhibition continues the Städel’s successful series, where we present our visitors not only with unique masterpieces but also with new and fresh perspectives on the major protagonists of modern art.”

The exhibition has been curated by Felix Krämer, who will be taking up the post of Director at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf from October, and co-curator Daniel Zamani (Städel Museum). “Following the exhibition 'Monet and the Birth of Impressionism' (2015), the Städel Museum is turning to another exciting chapter in the history of French art: the friendship between Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, which lasted over 40 years,” explains Krämer. “The exhibition brings out the creative dialogue between these two exceptional artists. It has been a long time since so many of their major works have been seen in Germany.” As Zamani points out, “Both artists developed an unmistakable and individual pictorial language, driven by their unremitting dedication to their work and life-long delight in experimentation. Even during their own lifetime Matisse and Bonnard were seen as two of the most important pioneers of modern art. With Bonnard’s paintings, in particular, it is only when you come face to face with the originals that you become aware of their full fascination. It is worth visiting the Städel just for that.”

The title of the exhibition, Long Live Painting!, is based on the programmatic exclamation “Vive la peinture!” with which Matisse saluted his friend Bonnard on 13 August 1925. Those three words on a postcard from Amsterdam were the beginning of a correspondence that went on for more than twenty years and that testifies to the depth of the respect and appreciation the two artists felt for each other. In the first decade of the twentieth century, both artists left Paris, then the capital of the avant-garde, for the Côte d’Azur, where they continued to cement their reputation as protagonists of the European art scene. Despite the near-contiguity of their lives and careers, art historians tend to correlate the two artists with opposing trends: Bonnard’s breezy, loose brushwork and scintillating soft pastels give rise to the construct of the painter as the last great heir of Impressionism, while Matisse’s preference for strong colours and flat, heavily contoured compositions earn him the accolade of being named a pioneer of twentieth-century abstraction.

In thematic chapters, the exhibition focuses on different interpretations of major genres: interiors, still lifes, landscapes and nudes. The aim of presenting Matisse and Bonnard together is to allow comparative contemplation, to create a space in which commonalities and differences emerge – but not to engender any kind of competition. Such a thing would be quite at odds with the relationship between the two artists. “When I think of you, I think of a mind cleansed of every old aesthetic convention, and it is that alone that permits a direct view of nature, the greatest joy that can befall a painter. I enjoy a little of that, thanks to you” wrote Bonnard to Matisse in January 1940. The value which the latter attached to the judgement of his friend is documented in a letter of November of the same year: “I need to see someone, and you’re the one I want to see.” Matisse did not want to discuss his pictures with anyone else. Seldom have two artists complemented one another so well.

Exhibition tour
The exhibition extends over two floors and is arranged around a series of different artistic themes: interiors, landscapes/nature, still lifes and women/the nude. An introductory section, occupying the first rooms on the ground floor of the exhibition, is devoted to the friendship between the two artists, featuring portraits by the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, self-portraits, and the two works painted by one artist and owned by the other.

The following rooms are devoted to interiors and, in particular, to the motif of the window, where the close exchange of ideas between the two artist-friends is strikingly apparent. Among the outstanding works here are Bonnard’s paintings The Bowl of Milk (ca. 1919) and The Window (1925), both from the Tate Modern in London, and Matisse’s Large Red Interior (1948), one of his last iconic works in oil, which is on loan from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The last room on the ground floor is devoted to the letters exchanged between the two artists, a selection of which can be heard in dramatised readings, and all of which can be digitally viewed.

Upstairs, the exhibition continues with the theme of landscape and nature, in which the lifelong fascination of both artists with the light and atmosphere of the French Riviera plays an important role. Here, a highlight of the exhibition is Bonnard’s The Sun-Filled Terrace (1939–1946, private collection). The painting is unusual because of its extremely horizontal format. It shows a terrace, on either side of which a garden landscape stretches away in vibrant, almost pink tones. While many of Bonnard’s late works depict views taken straight from the surroundings of his home at Le Bosquet, this large-scale work has the feeling of a timeless idyll. Matisse was deeply impressed when he saw the as yet unfinished composition in his friend’s studio. In January 1940 he wrote to him: “Your work is still clear in my memory, in all its details. Never before has it seemed to me so complete, and I can still picture quite distinctly the decorative passage with the rose branches. I like it very much.”

Another theme in which the dialogue between the two painters is reflected is still life. Like few other artists of their generation Bonnard and Matisse harboured a lifelong fascination with this centuries-old genre. Taking inspiration from predecessors such as Jean Siméon Chardin and Paul Cézanne, they aimed to release it from a naturalistic depiction of everyday objects and instead used it as a starting point for radical artistic experimentation with colour and form. The works on show here include Matisse’s still life from the Städel Museum, Flowers and Ceramic Plate (1913) – an early masterpiece and a firm favourite of visitors to the collection – and Bonnard’s luminous Bouquet of Mimosas (ca. 1945, private collection), which makes a perfect pendant to it. As in many paintings in Bonnard’s late, almost abstract style, paint itself seems to be the real subject of the composition, in which the thickly applied hues of yellow and orange blend the vibrantly glowing flowers with the surrounding interior.

In their approaches to the female nude, both artists developed their respective “signature paintings": Bonnard’s were sensuous nudes in baths or boudoirs, while Matisse’s were dreamlike odalisques, women of the harem in exotic settings. Bonnard’s model is typically his wife, Marthe, whom he immortalised in almost 400 paintings over a period of more than 50 years and whom he continued to paint even after her death. Her perpetually youthful body appears again and again in oneiric bathing pictures, permeated with a dreamlike and often disconcerting atmosphere of mystery. Matisse’s odalisques are completely different in tone – works of intimate theatricality, full of shimmering colour, where figure and interior are meshed together in vividly ornamental compositions that give vibrant expression to the artist’s vision of an art of perfect harmony.
The exhibition also allows insight into the creative process behind one of Matisse’s masterpieces, Large Reclining Nude. Using a camera, the artist documented the development of the painting from May to October 1935. In a total of 22 black-and-white photographs, we can see how he gradually reworked essential elements of the composition, continually simplifying it and making it and rendering its elements more planar. This work is also one of the very first oil paintings where Matisse used cut-out stripes of paper as aids to composition – a technique which was to become decisive for his late work and which completely superseded his painting on canvas after 1948. Perhaps the best-known work to have been created using these so-called “cut-outs” is Matisse’s artist’s book Jazz (1947), devoted to the brightly-coloured world of the circus, clowns, and the theatre, which is also on display in the exhibition.

MATISSE – BONNARD. “LONG LIVE PAINTING!”
GENERAL INFORMATION

Exhibition duration: 13 September 2017 to 14 January 2018
Curator: Dr. Felix Krämer (Head of Modern Art, Städel Museum)
Co-curator: Dr. Daniel Zamani (Assistant Curator of Modern Art, Städel Museum)
Press preview: Tuesday, 12 September 2017, 11 am

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de,
telephone +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, email besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun & public holidays: 10 am–6 pm, Thurs & Fri: 10 am–9 pm, Mon: closed
Special opening hours: Tue, 3.10.; Tue, 31.10.; Mon 25.12; Tue 26.12; Mon 8.1.2018: 10 am–6 pm; Mon, 1.1.2018: 11 am–6 pm; closed: Sun 24.12.; Sun. 31.12.

Admission: €14; concessions: €12; Sat, Sun, public holidays: €16, concessions: €14; family ticket: €24; free entry for children under 12; groups of more than 10 regular-admission paying people: reduced per person rate. Groups must give notice of visit in advance by calling +49 (0)69-605098-200 or emailing info@staedelmuseum.de.
Members of the Städelscher Museums-Verein enjoy free admission to the special exhibition.

Introductory tours of the exhibition: Tue 3 pm, Wed 1 pm, Thurs 6 pm, Fri 7 pm, Sat 4 pm and Sun 12 pm. On all public holidays (3.10., 31.10., 25.12, 26.12., 1.1.) as well as on 8.1. the tours take place at 4 pm. Places are limited. Tickets for the tours are available from the ticket desk, two hours before the tour is due to commence, priced €5. A portion of tickets for the introductory tours is available via our relaunched online ticketshop; the price of admission is combined in the special price of €18, to book, go to: tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

Catalogue: Accompanying the exhibition, a catalogue with 240 pages and 208 colour illustrations will be published by Prestel. It will include contributions by Dita Amory, Jenny Graser, Margrit Hahnloser-Ingold, Iris Hasler, Felix Krämer, Elena Schroll, Beate Söntgen, and Daniel Zamani. German edition/English edition, €39.90 (museum edition).
Accompanying booklet: a booklet to accompany the exhibition is available in German, price €7.50.

Audiotour and Städel App: An audiotour to the exhibition is available in German and English. The German guide is voiced by the actress Sophie Rois. One audiotour costs €4, two audiotours cost €7. As well as renting the audio equipment at the exhibition, you can download the audiotour conveniently at home with the Städel App. The app is available for free from Google Play and the Apple App Store and downloading the audioguide to current IOS and Android smartphones costs €1: http://www.staedelmuseum.de/de/angebote/staedel-app. The audioguide is supported by the Georg and Franziska Speyer Foundation.

Digitorial: The Digitorial has been made possible by the Aventis Foundation. It can be downloaded at: matissebonnard.staedelmuseum.de/en.

Social Media: The Städel Museum posts updates on the exhibition on social-media platforms using the hashtags #MatisseBonnard and #Staedel.

Exhibition sponsors and partners

Sponsored by: Société Générale, Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.
With additional support from: Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung
Media partners: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Media Frankfurt, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ARTE, WirtschaftsWoche, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt Main
Cultural partner: hr2-kultur

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), a native of Frankfurt, was not only a highly prominent naturalist but also one of the most renowned artists of her time. The year 2017 marks the 300th anniversary of her death. On this occasion, the Städel Museum is presenting the special exhibition “Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction” from 11 October 2017 to 14 January 2018. The show will acquaint visitors with the fascinating and filigree world of flower and plant depiction in drawings and prints of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Developed in collaboration with the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Technische Universität Berlin, the exhibition will feature major works by Maria Sibylla Merian in the context of flower depictions by her forerunners, contemporaries and successors, among them the famous Hortus Eystettensis by the pharmacist Basilius Besler (1561–1629) of Nuremberg, ornament engravings by Martin Schongauer (ca. 1445–1491), pharmacopeia of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, plant studies from the circle of Albrecht Dürer, and studies of nature by Georg Flegel (1566–1638) and Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel (1542–1600/01) of the period around 1600. Flower drawings by Bartholomäus Braun will also be on view, as will floral compositions by Barbara Regina Dietzsch (1706–1783) and her circle of the eighteenth century. “Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction” will present more than 150 works in all: sheets from the collections of the Städel and the Kupferstichkabinett, but also valuable loans from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg in Frankfurt.

The exhibition “Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction” is being sponsored by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.

“Maria Sibylla Merian is one of Frankfurt am Main’s most famous daughters. It was here that she received her professional training, and here that decisive foundations were laid for her highly exceptional impact as a natural scientist and an artist. All the more delighted are we to have the opportunity presented us by this anniversary year to mount a comprehensive exhibition on Merian and the tradition of flower portrayal – to which she provided such important impulses – here at the Städel Museum”, comments Städel Museum director Philipp Demandt.

“The œuvre of Maria Sibylla Merian is in a class of its own. This results from the genuine and unresolvable ambiguity that at the same time accounts for the special appeal of her works: artistic and scientific aspects are inseparably intertwined in these depictions, which consistently strike a fine balance between high art and the scientific representation of detail”, adds Martin Sonnabend, head of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings to 1750.

Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian is fascinating not only by virtue of her masterfully executed flower drawings, but also in view of her biography, which testifies to her will to assert herself as a woman in a patriarchal society. She was baptized in Frankfurt am Main on 4 April 1647. Her father, the draughtsman, printmaker and publisher Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593–1650), died when she was still a small child. In the workshop of her stepfather, the painter Jacob Marrel (1614–1681), the young Maria Sibylla trained as a flower painter in the seventeenth-century florilegium tradition. One of Georg Flegel’s few pupils, Marrel had come to specialize in flower depiction and was also active as an art dealer. Merian thus spent her youth in an environment that exposed her to the visual arts and the publishing trade, but also – through the practice of painting flowers – to the keen observation of nature. Maria Sibylla Merian grew up in a Calvinist family. This background and the city of Frankfurt were further significant factors in her development. A major European traffic hub, the free imperial city on the Main was one of the continent’s most important commercial centres, at whose trade fairs books, flowers and art – among many other goods – were bought and sold.
In 1665, Merian married Johann Andreas Graff (1636–1701), a pupil of Marrel’s. Shortly after the birth of their first daughter, the family moved to Nuremberg, Graff’s native town. There he sold maps and topographical views of buildings, and Merian also contributed to the family’s living: with flower paintings in the florilegium tradition, lessons for ladies in the embroidery and drawing of flowers, and the sale of drawing utensils and paints. Her first publication, the New Flower Book, accordingly contained decorative floral motifs intended for use as models for drawings or patterns for embroidery. She also continued to pursue her observations of nature, and in 1679 published her findings in the first volume of her work Caterpillars, Their Wondrous Transformation and Peculiar Nourishment from Flowers. With this book, Maria Sibylla Merian broke new scientific ground: there had never before been such a comprehensive, carefully documented and complete description of the metamorphosis of caterpillars taking the symbiotic relationship between the insects and their host plants into account. The Caterpillar Book not only made Merian famous but was also an economic success. After the death of her stepfather Jacob Marrel, Merian, her husband and their (meanwhile) two daughters moved back to Frankfurt, where her mother still lived, and where she published the second volume of the Caterpillar Book in 1683.
Not many years thereafter, Maria Sibylla Merian made the far-reaching decision to join the radically reformed Labadist community in Wiuwert, Holland, along with her two children and her mother. This brought about her separation, and ultimately her divorce, from her husband. After several years in the Labadist community, and following her mother’s death, Merian revoked her citizenship of Frankfurt and moved to Amsterdam, where she dealt in paints and painting and drawing utensils and collected and sold preserved animal specimens. At the end of the seventeenth century, accompanied by her younger daughter, she embarked on a journey to the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America – an undertaking as adventurous as it was expensive in those days. The two women’s stay in the foreign land, which included numerous expeditions to the rain forest, lasted nearly two years. Merian was thus the first ever to travel the northern South American country for purposes of natural history research, as well as the first woman to devote herself to the study of tropical flora and fauna. In 1705, after her return to Amsterdam, she published her treatise Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium in Latin and Dutch. A third volume of the Caterpillar Book came out shortly after her death on 13 January 1717. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), like Merian a native of Frankfurt, dedicated a few brief but fitting lines to her: in his view, her narrative depictions of plants and insects constantly oscillated “back and forth between art and science, between the contemplation of nature and painterly purposes”.

The exhibition
“Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction” features Merian’s artistic predecessors, whose tradition she built on, while also shedding light on what constitutes her independence within that tradition and showing how flower depiction developed after her, and under her influence. The exhibition narrative begins considerably before Merian’s own time with a large selection of floral depictions in illuminated books, early prints, engravings, and woodcut illustrations in herbals and pharmacopoeias of the fifteenth century. With his early flower portrayals, Georg Flegel (1566–1638) continued the pioneering depictive tradition – based on the study of nature – of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and circle, developed it further, and influenced his pupil Jacob Marrel, Merian’s stepfather. Likewise in Flegel’s day, Joris (Georg) Hoefnagel (1542–1600/01) – a native of Amsterdam who lived in Frankfurt for a time – produced emblematic flower and insect pictures, which his son Jacob Hoefnagel (1573–1632/35) then went on to publish in delicate engravings, thus making them accessible to a larger circle of artists and other interested persons. The show contrasts Hoefnagels’ small-scale artworks with what may have been the most ambitious publication of the time: the Hortus Eystettensis by the pharmacist Basilius Besler (1561–1629), published in 1613. This book would come to serve as a model for numerous florilegia. With the help of such compendia, garden owners could eternalize the wealth and botanical quality of their flower collections. Particularly in the seventeenth century, gardens and valuable plants were a precious asset, a circumstance to which the florilegia of the period – collections of splendid gouache drawings on vellum or exclusively printed volumes of large-scale coloured engravings – bear witness. Accompanied by two further examples – one with flower portraits by the floriegium painter Bartholomäus Braun (ca. 1626–1684) –, the multi-volume Florilegium of Count Johannes von Nassau-Idstein (1603–1677) is one of the show’s major highlights. A small part of this flower book, which has long been known and has already undergone thorough analysis, is in the holdings of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Two further albums, on the other hand, were only discovered a few years ago in the Städel library, having found their way into its holdings during a mid-nineteenth-century inventory and remained there ever since. The two splendid books, still clad in their original red velvet-covered bindings with fire-gilded fittings, were the first acquisition made for the Städel drawing collection. The exhibition is presenting them to the public – and the accompanying catalogue is publishing them – for the first time. Maria Sibylla Merian will hold pride of place in the exhibition with a group of extremely rare early works as well as a number of drawings bearing a direct relation to her scientific publications such as her flower books and the Caterpillar Book. New findings will be presented on the making of the precious gouache drawings on vellum for the Caterpillar Book. Also on view are several works whose traditional attribution to Maria Sibylla Merian has been questioned or disproved in recent years – an indication of the fact that her œuvre has yet to be treated to comprehensive critical study. After Merian, the show continues with the artistic flower depiction of the eighteenth century, represented by the Dietzsches, an artists’ family of Nuremberg whose most prominent member was Barbara Regina Dietzsch (1706–1783). Finally, it offers a look ahead to the incorporation of plant depictions in landscape painting as well as the process by which natural history details took on a life of their own in the study sheets of early German Romanticism.

“Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction” is accompanied by an extensive museum education programme ranging from general and evening guided tours and events in the framework of the Städel’s “Kunst und Religion”, “Barrierefreies Kunsterlebnis” and “KUNSTKOLLEG” series to studio and school-holiday courses for children. The programme will also feature various events in cooperation with the Frankfurt Palmengarten: ““With a calm hand and a practised eye” in the “KUNSTKOLLEG Aktiv” series (21 October 2017), a guided tour of the Bromeliad House followed by a drawing course taught by the botanical painter Sue Hénon (4 November 2017), a guest commentary with Karin Wittstock, who is in charge of the Palmengarten’s cultural programme (19 November 2017), and a guided tour on the topic of “Maria Sibylla Merian and the Flora of Suriname” with Palmengarten custodian Hilke Steinecke (22 November 2017). On Wednesday, 8 November 2017, the Städel Museum will moreover present a reading with Barbara Beuys in the Metzler Hall, at which the author will introduce her biography of the artist Maria Sibylla Merian recently published by the Insel Verlag. For the complete framework programme, see www.staedelmuseum.de. (Most of these events will be in German.)


Maria Sibylla Merian
And the Tradition of Flower Depiction

Curators: Dr Martin Sonnabend (Head of the Collection of Prints and Drawings to 1750, Städel Museum), Dr Michael Roth (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett)
Exhibition dates: 11 October 2017 to 14 January 2018
Press preview: Monday, 9 October 2017, 12 noon
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Catalogue: To accompany the exhibition, the Hirmer Verlag has published a catalogue with 256 pages and approx. 178 illustrations, edited by Michael Roth, Magdalena Bushart and Martin Sonnabend with assistance from Catalina Heroven, with a foreword by Heinrich Schulze Altcappenberg and Philipp Demandt. In German. 29.90 euros (museum edition)

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-200, fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun 10 am – 6 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am – 9 pm, closed Mondays
Special opening hours: 31 Oct. 2017, 10 am – 6 pm; 24 Dec. 2017 closed; 25, 26 Dec. 2017, 10 am – 6 pm; 31 Dec. 2017 closed; 1 Jan. 2018, 11 am – 6 pm; 8 Jan. 2018, 10 am – 6 pm

Admission: Tue–Fri: 14 euros, reduced 12 euros; Sat, Sun and holidays: 16 euros, reduced 14 euros; families 24 euros, free admission for children up to twelve years of age. Groups of at least ten persons who would normally be charged the full admission fee: reduced admission 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.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Fri 6 pm, Sun 2 pm. The number of participants is limited; no previous reservations necessary.

Accompanying programme (excerpt):
KUNSTKOLLEG Aktiv: “With a calm hand and a practised eye”, 21 October 2017, 1 to 5 pm
Maria Sibylla Merian. “Pineapple with Cockroach”: drawing course with guided tour in the Palmengarten, 4 November 2017, 1 to 5 pm, Palmengarten Frankfurt
Guest commentary with Karin Wittstock: “Botanical Painting Between Art and Science”, 19 November 2017, 12 noon, Städel Museum
“Maria Sibylla Merian and the Flora of Suriname”: guided tour in the Palmengarten with Palmengarten custodian Hilke Steinecke, 22 November 2017, 6 pm
Reading with Barbara Beuys, 8 November 2017, 7 pm (admission from 6.30 pm), Metzler Hall, Städel Museum, admission: 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, tickets available online from mid-September at tickets.staedelmuseum.de
(Most of these events will be in German.)

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

Sponsored by: Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain

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.

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

Matisse – Bonnard. ‘Long Live Painting!’
Until 14 January 2018
Exhibition house
Two outstanding protagonists of modernism, presented together in Germany for the first time, will continue to take centre stage at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt until 14 January 2018: Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947). The special exhibition highlights the two French painters’ friendship that spanned more than forty years. Both artists shared a marked preference for the same subjects: interiors, still lifes, landscapes, and, above all, female nudes. The selection of about one hundred and twenty paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints unfolds a dialogue between Matisse and Bonnard and offers new perspectives on the development of the European avant-garde from the beginning of the twentieth century to the end of the Second World War. The survey is rounded out with a number of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who visited the two artists on the French Riviera in 1944.
Curator: Dr. Felix Krämer (Städel Museum)
Co-curator: Dr. Daniel Zamani (Städel Museum)


Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction
Until 14 January 2018
Exhibition hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) ranks among the most important naturalists and renowned artists of her time. Marking the third hundredth anniversary of her death in 2017, the Städel Museum presents the special exhibition ‘Maria Sibylla Merian and the Tradition of Flower Depiction’. The show acquaints visitors with the fascinating and filigree world of flower and plant depiction in drawings and prints from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Conceived in collaboration with the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin and the Technische Universität Berlin, it features major works by Maria Sibylla Merian in the context of flower depictions of her forerunners, contemporaries, and successors.
Curators: Dr. Martin Sonnabend (Städel Museum), Dr. Michael Roth (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett)


Rubens. The Power of Transformation
8 February to 21 May 2018
Exhibition house
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. 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: it shows how profound the dialogue was into which Rubens entered with his predecessors’ and contemporaries’ achievements and the scope of their impact on the five decades of his production.
Rubens’s extensive œuvre reflects the influences of ancient sculpture as well as that of the later art from Italy and north of the Alps, from the masters toward 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. 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 St. Petersburg, the Vatican Museums, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Curators: Prof. Dr. Jochen Sander (Städel Museum), Dr. Gerlinde Gruber (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien), Stefan Weppelmann (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)


Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud: Faces
16 May to 12 August 2018
Exhibition hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Both born in Berlin and brought to England as children to save them from the Nazis, Frank Auerbach (b. 1931) and Lucian Freud (1922–2011) shared more than a similar destiny: they were linked in close friendship, and their figurative painting revolutionized the language of modern art. Devoting themselves to the same motifs with the greatest intensity and perseverance over decades, they mostly depicted people from their immediate surroundings. The restriction in terms of contents is rooted in their search for artistic knowledge. The creative process is always a relentless struggle for truth.
Seizing the occasion of the important acquisition of a self-portrait drawing by Auerbach by the Städelsche Museums-Verein e. V. the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings presents a selection of Frank Auerbach’s and Lucian Freud’s prints and drawings in spring 2018.
Curator: Dr. Regina Freyberger (Städel Museum)

Colormaster F, 2018. Manuel Franke in the Städel Garden
20 June to 23 September 2018
Städel Garden
Manuel Franke (b. 1964) develops a monumental object as his contribution to the series ‘In the Städel Garden’. Half sculpture, half painting, the object will transform the garden of the Städel Museum on the roof of the Garden Halls into a space-spanning and tangible installation from early summer 2018.
Franke’s Colormaster F takes on the entire garden bounded by buildings on three sides and counters this layout with a corrugated iron ramp in bright colours. Deliberately spoiling the view of the green lawn hill from the street and blocking the way of people visiting the garden as a massive, insurmountable obstacle, it offers a completely new experience of the place. Colormaster F not only changes the garden’s spatial constellation but also creates another, additional space within it that is both open and sealed off. The lawn square and the hill are thus, at least temporarily, enclosed on four sides.
Manuel Franke studied with Tony Cragg and Irmin Kamp at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as well as with Daniel Buren and Pontus Hulten at the Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques in Paris. His space-spanning and space-transforming installations are characterized by their painterly surfaces and a unique colourfulness.
Curator: Dr. Martin Engler (Städel Museum)


Ursula Schulz-Dornburg. The Land In Between
Photographs from 19080 to 2012 4 July to 9 September 2018
Exhibition house
Born in Berlin in 1938 and based in Düsseldorf today, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg has centred on border landscapes, places of transit, and relics of outmoded cultures since the early 1980s. Her photographs confront us with cult and cultural sites in Europe, Asia, and the Near East and, above all, with the visible and invisible boundaries between these continents and regions. Mostly in black and white and comprising numerous parts, the series of photographs taken there are a testimony to vanished sceneries, past political systems, crumbling civilisations, and disappearing societies. Fuelled by ethnological curiosity and betraying an archaeologist’s eye, her pictures reveal the blurry fringes and points of intersection of today’s life between globalised everyday world and its blind spots on the threshold between conceptual art and enlightened approach.
Assembling thirteen series, the exhibition offers a first institutional overall survey of Ursula Schulz-Dornburg’s artistic development and the photographer’s creative range over the past thirty years.
Curator: Dr. Martin Engler (Städel Museum)
Co-curator: Iris Hasler (Städel Museum)


Städelschule Graduates
11 July to 5 August 2018
Exhibition house
The 2018 exhibition of the graduates from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule will be presented in the Städel Museum. The show in the Städel’s exhibition house offers solid insights into the multifarious production of the internationally renowned art college’s students.


Lotte Laserstein. Face to Face
19 September 2018 to 17 March 2019
Exhibition hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
The Berlin painter Lotte Laserstein (1898–1993) made a name for herself with sensitive portraits of her contemporaries in the late years of the Weimar Republic. She successfully participated in numerous exhibitions and competitions. Critics found hymnic words to sing her praise, calling her a ‘passionate painter by nature’ and attesting her ‘skills of remarkable dimensions’. Following the artist’s early recognition, her career came to an abrupt halt, however: the political situation under the National Socialist regime increasingly excluded the painter with a Jewish background from the cultural scene. Laserstein found herself forced to leave Germany in 1937. With the artist cut off from the international arena, her work was largely ostracised from public perception. Today, Laserstein’s œuvre ranks among the major rediscoveries of recent years.
The Städel Museum’s exhibition paying tribute to the painter will be on display in Frankfurt from 19 September 2018 to 13 January 2019 and subsequently in the Moderna Museet Malmö. It will be the first solo presentation of the artist’s work to take place outside of Berlin. The show will build on the Städel’s holdings, which has acquired important works by the artist over the past few years: the paintings Russian Girl with Compact of 1928 and Boy with Kasper Puppet (Wolfgang Karger) of 1933. Assembling about fifty works, the exhibition looks into Laserstein’s development as an artist, focusing on her works of the 1920s and 1930s, which mark the highlight of her production. Laserstein’s central concern was portraiture. She rejected traditional role expectations and developed new, especially female images for identification in many of her works. These images found their expression in athletic and fashion-conscious women in control, who reflected the type of the New Woman. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to become acquainted with this long-forgotten artist’s fascinating work.
Curators: Dr. Alexander Eiling (Städel Museum), Elena Schroll (Städel Museum)


Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism
26 September 2018 to 13 January 2019
Exhibition house
The Städel Museum will present a retrospective dedicated to the important artist Victor Vasarely’s work in autumn 2018. A co-founder and main representative of op art, Vasarely (1906–1997) forged a bridge between modern and contemporary art, between the aesthetically enormously productive interwar era and the post-war avant-gardes. His œuvre spans more than six decades and incorporates the most different styles and influences: born in Hungary, Vasarely was an advertising graphic designer and a key figure of French post-war art rooted in the Bauhaus of the 1920s. First and foremost, however, he stood at the beginning of a development that further blurred the boundaries between free and applied art, between ‘high’ and ‘low’, panel painting and poster, museum and teen room.
Conceived in collaboration with the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, ‘Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism’ traces the roots and genesis of this once-in-a-century œuvre based on key pictures and objects of his major work. Particularly the pictures of his Vega series have informed our notion of the artist to this day: technoid and psychedelically colourful pictures that seem to press into the room by means of optical illusion—a both perfidious and fascinating mixture of minimalist reduction and pop-art motley whose industrial colourfulness, seriality, and simplification became emblematic for a society’s faith in the future and the ‘Swinging Sixties’. Partly still merging figuration and abstraction, Vasarely’s early paintings testify to his ties with the Russian and German avant-gardes of the 1910s and 1920s. Abstract motion studies and other works from these early years, however, leave no doubt about the ambiguous tenor that still informs Vasarely’s œuvre till the end: the rigid geometry is playfully set in motion; the compositions, initially firmly resting in themselves, are thrown out of kilter. What superficially presents itself as a light-hearted delusion of perception is actually one of the most consistent inquiries into the project of modernity and its advancement. Vasarely, whose work is much too willingly reduced to his bewildering op art, is presented in his role as one of the central figures of modern art in the Städel’s show.
Assembling one hundred and twenty works from more than sixty years and from both European and US collections, the exhibition pointedly conveys the mutual penetration and influences of everyday sphere and art, the continuing transition between the aesthetics of pop and modernism in Vasarely’s work. It offers not only a confrontation with one of the first European pop artists but also with a new history of the project of modernity that runs through the entire twentieth century.
Curator: Dr. Martin Engler (Städel Museum)
Co-curator: Dr. Jana Baumann (Städel Museum)


Titles and dates subject to alterations.