DaimlerChrysler Contemporary: Classically modern masterpieces in the exhibition
Classical : Modern I
Haus Huth in Berlin
April 13 until September 17, 2006
Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Alte Potsdamer Straße 5
open daily from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. Entrance is free.
Classical : Modern presents masterpieces from the early days of the DaimlerChrysler Collection as well as related contemporary positions
Some 100 works from the realms of painting, sculpture, drawing, space installation and video by 31 international artists
www.collection.daimlerchrysler.com
This year, Haus Huth, the permanent exhibition room of the DaimlerChrysler Collection at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, will again be the venue of four exhibitions. The exhibitions will continue the series Photography, Video, Mixed Media and Private Corporate and launch the newly designed series Classical : Modern which will be shown from April 13 until and including September 17. This exhibition will present works from the early days of the corporate collection founded in 1977.
The DaimlerChrysler Collection initially focused its interest on paintings by artists from southern Germany primarily lecturers and students of the Stuttgart Academy like Adolf Hölzel, Oskar Schlemmer, Willi Baumeister, Hans Arp and Max Bill. They all shared an artistically motivated interest in an interdisciplinary dialogue between the fine arts, design, architecture and graphic design in the succession of Bauhaus. The DaimlerChrysler Collection continues to be committed to this researching artistic approach to this day. With the systematic pursuance of this approach and the concentrated addition of abstract-constructivist, conceptual and minimalist positions through to the present, the DaimlerChrysler Collection has been given a clearly defined profile which is well founded in art history terms.
The group of classically modern works in the DaimlerChrysler Collection, started with the acquisition of a painting by Willi Baumeister in 1977, primarily comprises paintings but also sculptures, wall objects and graphic works. These works represent the development of art through to the 1960s with the focus on south-west Germany.
Two compositions by Adolf Hölzel date back to 1908/09, thereby forming the prelude of the collection in chronological terms. Hölzel, who was appointed to a professorship at the Stuttgart Academy in 1905, was the lecturer of Willi Baumeister, Camille Graeser, Otto Meyer-Amden, Oskar Schlemmer, Johannes Itten, Adolf Fleischmann, Ida Kerkovius and others artists who became famous at a later stage; they are represented by groups of works or representative individual works which outline the development of this trend in art.
Schlemmer who is occupying a special place in the DaimlerChrysler Collection with nine works from three decades lectured at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1921 until 1928. Josef Albers, whose biography was also significantly influenced by his studies and lecturing activity at the Bauhaus, immigrated to the USA in 1933, where he became one of the leading lecturers. Four works in the collection reflect important development steps during his time in the USA.
Another focus of the collection is the work of Max Bill. Bill studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau under Schlemmer, Kandinsky and Klee before co-founding the design college in Ulm in 1950 and serving as its first rector. In Paris, Bill became a member of the »abstraction création« group founded in 1931; other artists in this group, who are also represented in the collection, were Arp, Baumeister and Vantongerloo. The latter formed the core of the »Zürcher Konkrete« (Zurich Concrete Art) group together with Camille Graeser, Verena Loewensberg and Richard Paul Lohse a group whose spokesman and theoretical protagonist Max Bill remained well into the 1960s.
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau for a short time, member of »De Stijl«, co-founder of »die abstrakten hannover« (Hanovers Abstract Artists), a friend of Max Bill and, at a later stage, a lecturer at the college in Ulm influenced all these groupings and can be seen as the most important pioneer of concrete art in Germany.
The Classical : Modern I exhibition pursues four lines. First, some 30 works outline the impact of the Stuttgart-based circle around Hölzel. This ranges from Schlemmers study in oil, Rote Dächer (Red Roofs), 1913, which he created while still being a student of Hölzel, through to the works of Johannes Itten and Camille Graeser from the 1950s and 1960s.
In a second line, monographic work groups by Adolf Fleischmann, Rupprecht Geiger and Josef Albers as well as large-format individual works by Günter Fruhtrunk represent aspects of monochromy and color field painting from the time between 1950 and 1987.
A third line is dedicated to examples of constructivist and concrete art. In chronological terms, this ranges from Richard Paul Lohses striped picture of 1949 through to Max Bills caput mortuum of 1972.
The fourth line follows the basic principle of exhibitions by the DaimlerChrysler Collection, be they thematic presentations within the company, stations on a tour through museums all over the world, or exhibitions at the DaimlerChrysler Contemporary in Berlin: the works of classically modern and post-war avant-garde artists engage in a dialogue with contemporary works of art. The group of color field paintings is, for instance, joined by Günter Schareins Sehnsuchtstriptychon (Triptych of Yearning) of 1987. Three works of painter Ben Willikens, dating from the period between 1984 and 2004, and a floor work by Philippe Parreno engage in an intensive intellectual exchange with the classical works reduced to black, white and shades of gray by Albers, Arp, Vordemberge-Gildewart and Vantongerloo. In the group of constructivist and concrete art, we have integrated recent works by Reyle, Rockenschaub, Hiepler, Gillick and Monk, which can be related in different ways to the formal vocabulary and analytical pictorial concepts of the classical artists.
A special role is played by painter Ben Willikens, a resident of Stuttgart, lecturer at the Art Academy in Munich for many years and its director until 2005. He developed a color concept for the exhibition and designed the invitation, a poster and an edition (two serigraphic works each sized 90 x 60 cm).
The exhibition shows works by the artists listed below:
Max Ackermann, Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Willi Baumeister, Max Bill, Adolf Fleischmann, Günter Fruhtrunk, Rupprecht Geiger, Hermann Glöckner, Camille Graeser, Adolf Hölzel, Johannes Itten, Ida Kerkovius, Norbert Kricke, Verena Loewensberg, Richard Paul Lohse, Otto Meyer-Amden, Lothar Quinte, Oskar Schlemmer, Anton Stankowski, George Vantongerloo, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart
SPECIAL GUESTS: Liam Gillick, Esther Hiepler, Jonathan Monk, Olivier Mosset, Philippe Parreno, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Anselm Reyle, Günter Scharein, Ben Willikens
The exhibition at the DaimlerChrysler Contemporary in Haus Huth on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Alte Potsdamer Straße 5, is open daily from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. Entrance is free.
www.collection.daimlerchrysler.com
