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until 16.09. | #2771ARTatBerlin | Galerie Brockstedt is presenting the summer exhibition “Positions of Modernism – From Max Klinger to Willi Baumeister” until the midth of September 2020.
“Art is always contemporary and realistic, it has never existed otherwise and, above all, it cannot exist otherwise.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Artists record what they have met or touched in order to share it with us, the viewer. Paul Klee once put this aptly: “They do not reproduce what is visible, but make it visible!
Thus, in the recently opened exhibition at Galerie Brockstedt, we can take an exciting journey through time in an almost museum-like way, on the traces of modernism, from the turn of the century to the 1960s.
Vilmos Huszár, Stilleven met Vruchten, without year, 50 x 59,5 cm, oil on hard fibre
On display are works by Willi Baumeister – Carl Buchheister – Peter Foerster – Otto Freundlich – Conrad Felixmüller – George Grosz – Vilmos Huzár – Edmund Kesting – Max Klinger – Kosnick-Kloss – Jeanne Mammen – Georg Meistermann – Johannes Molzahn – Richard Müller – Jozef Peeters – Christian Schad – Rudolf Schlichter – Lothar Schreyer – Kurt Schwitters – Bruno Voigt – Erich Wegener.
Carl Buchheister, Komposition Kla, 1933, 29 x 24,5 cm, oil on cardboard, collage
Willi Baumeister, dedicated to Jacques Callot, 1940, 54.4 x 65.4 cm, oil, lacquer on canvas
The approximately 40 unique works on display impressively demonstrate how much the artists have struggled for new forms of expression since the turn of the century, after they had detached themselves from the objectifiable truth of the spirit of the 19th century that lay behind reality.
Hannah Kosnick-Kloss, Abstrakte Komposition III,
around 1940, 42 x 29,5 cm, oil on hard fibre
Jozef Peeters, Waterverfschildering I, 1922, 60,2 x 41,5 cm, Aquarell
Modern artists are now increasingly adopting a basic position critical of consciousness, in which they address the questioning of reality and their own existence in the work of art:
“In concrete terms, this relativized artistic self-understanding is expressed in the experimental exploration of pictorial means, in the testing of a new visual language as a means of communicating one’s own inner self, and in the search for objectifiable criteria for naming objects such as space – surface – color – movement – light effect – haptic quality – change.” This is what Karin Thomas says in her groundbreaking history of style in the visual arts.
Richard Müller, Vogelinsel, 1915, 17 x 49.5 cm, charcoal on paper
Max Klinger, O.T. (Lying female nude, back view), ca. 1910, 17.7 x 46.2 cm, charcoal on paper
Through her personal view, the reality surrounding the artists, the eventful contemporary history of these decades becomes tangible: the political upheavals and groundbreaking innovations, such as those of Freud’s psychoanalysis with its fundamentally new approaches to philosophy and creativity research.
Rudolf Schlichter, Speedy (standing with lace-up boots),
around 1930, 190 x 84 cm, oil on canvas
No matter whether it is the large works, such as the bronze by William Wauer, “Portrait Nell Walden” from 1918, the watercolor “In the Café” by George Grosz, from 1922, around the oil painting “Speedy standing” by Rudolf Schlichter, from 1930, the oil painting by Willi Baumeister “Dedicated to Jacques Callot, from 1940, the oil painting “Le Grand accident” by Gust Romijn from 1960, or smaller works – all of the exhibited works formulate very personal, compelling statements – refer to modernist positions in a representational or abstract form.
Bruno Voigt, Frau Merzenich, 1931, 49.9 x 32.2 cm, ink, charcoal on paper
The many other exhibits in a wide variety of techniques, including silent magical drawings, also show us the density of upheaval in these exciting, researching decades of art history in an enormous variety of ways.
Barbara Brockstedt
Übersetzung: ART@Berlin
Exhibition period: from now on until Saturday, 29. August 2020 – ATTENTION: extended until Wednesday, 16th September 2020!
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Exhibition Positionen der Moderne – Galerie Brockstedt | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
