Modern times - Kunsthalle Würth

Artists of the Exhibition
With this exhibition the Kunsthalle Würth and the
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin continue their long-time,
fruitful collaboration.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive
catalogue, published by Swiridoff Verlag.
George Grosz, Grauer Tag (Grey Day), 1921
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Potsdamer Platz (Potsdam Square), 1914
“Modern Times” is based on the highly successful
exhibition at the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin (2010-11), which reviewed the
history of art in Germany during the first half of the
last century in a new way. It is supplemented by a
show of works by Lotte Laserstein, Wilhelm Lachnit
and Horst Strempel, providing an opportunity to discover and rediscover previously unnoticed facets of
this epoch. Like the interlocking cogwheels in Charlie
Chaplin's famous film Modern Times, to which the
exhibition title refers, artists, subjects, recent history
and periods will interact and unsettle our habitual
Hans Arp • Willi Baumeister • Herbert Bayer • Max
Beckmann • Rudolf Belling • Charlotte BerendCorinth • Rudolf Bergander • Constantin Brâncuşi •
Fritz Burmann • Erich Büttner • Pol Cassel • Giorgio
de Chirico • Lovis Corinth • Salvador Dalí • Heinrich
Harry Deierling • Robert Delaunay • Otto Dix • Óscar
Domínguez • Albin Egger-Lienz • Heinrich Ehmsen •
Edgar Ende • Max Ernst • Lyonel Feininger • Conrad
Felixmüller • Ernst Fritsch • Natalja Gontscharowa •
Walter Gramatté • Juan Gris • George Grosz • Hans
Grundig • Kurt Günther • Erich Heckel • Hannah Höch •
Ferdinand Hodler • Karl Hofer • Willy Jaeckel • Wassily Kandinsky • Alexander Kanoldt • Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner • Paul Klee • Oskar Kokoschka • Georg
Kolbe • Käthe Kollwitz • Leo von König • Wilhelm
Lachnit • Lotte Laserstein • Konrad Adolf Lattner •
Henri Laurens • Fernand Léger • Wilhelm Lehmbruck •
Franz Lenk • Alice Lex-Nerlinger • René Magritte •
Ludwig Meidner • Carlo Mense • Otto Modersohn •
Paula Modersohn-Becker • Amedeo Modigliani •
Otto Mueller • Edvard Munch • Otto Nagel • Reinhold
Nägele • Ernst Wilhelm Nay • Oskar Nerlinger • Emil
Nolde • Max Oppenheimer • Charlotte E. Pauly • Max
Pechstein • Pablo Picasso • Robert Pudlich • Hans
Purrmann • Curt Querner • Franz Radziwill • Christian
Schad • Josef Scharl • Oskar Schlemmer • Rudolf
Schlichter • Wilhelm Schmid • Karl Schmidt-Rottluff •
Georg Schrimpf • Kurt Schwitters • Horst Strempel •
Georg Tappert • Fritz Tröger • Félix Vallotton • Heinrich Vogeler • Karl Völker • Friedrich VordembergeGildewart • William Wauer • Emil Rudolf Weiß
Works of Art
Cover
Christian Schad
Sonja, 1928 (Detail)
Oil on canvas, 90 x 60 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie. Acquired by
Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie from funds of the foundation
of Ingeborg and Günter Milich.
Photo: bpk/Jörg P. Anders
© Christian Schad Stiftung
Aschaffenburg/VG Bild-Kunst,
Bonn, 2014
Rudolf Belling
Dreiklang (Triad), 1919/24
Birchwood, 91 x 77 x 77 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie
Acquired 1924
Photo: bpk/Klaus Göken
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2014
Fernand Léger
Les deux sœurs
(Two Sisters), 1935
Oil on canvas, 162 x 114 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie
Photo: bpk/Jörg P. Anders
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2014
Lotte Laserstein
Abend über Potsdam
(Evening above Potsdam), 1930
Oil on wood, 110 x 205 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie.
Acquired with assistance of:
Bundesrepublik Deutschland,
Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin,
Kulturstiftung der Länder, Ernst von
Siemens Kunststiftung etc.
Photo: bpk/Roman März
© Nationalgalerie,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Shop & Cafeteria
The museum shop Würth with its great
selection of items and the cafeteria are open
during the usual opening hours.
Pablo Picasso
Femme assise dans un fauteuil
(Woman Sitting in an Armchair), 1909
Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie
Photo: bpk/Jörg P. Anders
© Succession Picasso/
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2014
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Potsdamer Platz (Potsdam Square), 1914
Oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie. Acquired with
assistance of:
Bundesrepublik Deutschland,
Kulturstiftung der Länder, Ernst von
Siemens Kunststiftung, Kulturstiftung
der Deutschen Bank etc..
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie
George Grosz
Grauer Tag (Grey Day), 1921
Oil on canvas, 115 x 80 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie
Acquired 1954 by the Land Berlin
Photo: bpk/Jörg P. Anders
© Estate of George Grosz Princeton,
N. J./VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2014
Emil Nolde
Papua-Jünglinge
(Papuan Boys), 1914
Oil on canvas, 70 x 103,5 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Nationalgalerie
Acquired 1951
Photo: bpk/Jörg P. Anders
© Nolde Stiftung Seebüll
Parking facilities
are available at the municipal car parks in
the city and at the car park "Weilerwiese".
Please follow the parking signs of Schwäbisch Hall.
Administration
Museum Würth
Reinhold-Würth-Straße 15
74653 Künzelsau
Fon +49 7940 15-2200
Fax +49 7940 15- 4200
All activities of Kunsthalle
Würth are projects by
Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG.
KUNSTHALLE
Lange Straße 35
74523 Schwäbisch Hall
Fon +49 791 94672- 0
Fax +49 791 94672- 50
[email protected]
www.kunst.wuerth.com
‡
[]
Opening hours
23.5.2014 –1.5.2015
Daily 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.
Dec. 25/26 and Jan. 1 12 p.m.–5 p.m.,
closed Dec. 24 and 31
Disabled access
Free admission
Guided Tours
Audioguides for self-guided tours: € 6
Guided tours for groups are welcome
by appointment.
We ask for your understanding that guided
tours with own guides are not possible.
Fon +49 791 94672-14
[email protected]
JOHANNITERKIRCHE
1SM-PL-UN-15’- 04/14 © by Adolf Wurth GmbH & Co. KG
notions about modern art. In addition to great aesthetic pleasure, the show is bound to trigger stimulating reflections concerning history, art and politics.
Modern
times
Modern
times
The Nationalgalerie of the
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
as Guest of Kunsthalle Würth,
Schwäbisch Hall
23 May 2014–1 May 2015
Daily 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
The Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu
Berlin is sending approximately 200 of its most
renowned works of art from the turbulent epoch of
1900-1945 to the Kunsthalle Würth. This will grace
Schwäbisch Hall with an exhibition of
superlatives, the Nationalgalerie
collection being one of the most
outstanding treasure
troves of classical
modernism in
the world.
Established as early
as 1919, immediately after the
collapse of the
Hohenzollern
Empire, a new
Rudolf Belling,
Dreiklang (Triad), 1919/24
Even though the Nazis hewed irreparable gaps in the
stocks of the Nationalgalerie, no other German collection boasts a greater abundance and variety of
masterpieces of classical modernism. It unfolds a
polyphony of fascinating links, intellectual currents,
cross-references, and subtle connections from
Expressionism and Dadaism through Neue Sachlichkeit and Bauhaus to Surrealism. For a transcen-
with dynamic pathos, ecstasy and eroticism, was
soon accompanied by an image of alienated urban
man attempting to escape the cul-de-sac of Wilhelmine Germany. Sensing impending disaster yet
also yearning for change, many young artists euphorically greeted the outbreak of the First World War.
Many volunteered for duty, and some never returned
home. Others, such as Max Beckmann, Wilhelm
Lehmbruck and Otto Dix, translated their deeply disturbing war experiences into extraordinary imagery.
The Armistice brought great disillusionment in its
wake. Attacking contemporary postwar culture as
“Veronal for the conscience,” commenting on current
events with irony, satire and social criticism, and
expanding means of artistic expression by collage
and caricature, the Dadaists came on the scene. The
Surrealists demanded an “esprit nouveau” as the
essence of a culture entirely liberated from convention. Many other artists attempted to make sense of
the new era with realistic detachment and supersmooth surfaces, for which the term Neue SachLotte Laserstein, Abend über Potsdam (Evening above Potsdam), 1930
Fernand Léger, Les deux sœurs (Two Sisters), 1935
Emil Nolde, Papua-Jünglinge (Papuan Boys), 1914
department of the museum was established, the first
public collection of contemporary modern art in the
20th century. Until the Nazi takeover it focused on the
highlights of the various rival movements of the day.
Even the pre-1914 years, often idealized as the Belle
Epoque, were marked by profound changes. Psychoanalysis, industrialization, technology and science
combined to produce a subliminal insecurity that frequently induced exaggerated masculinity, militarism,
imperialism and colonialism, or inspired alternative
projects such as educational reform, nudism or
eurythmics. An idealized view of nature, expressed
lichkeit (New Objectivity) was soon coined. Yet there
were also alternative, optimistic views in disillusioned Germany. Bringing art back into practical life
and giving it a solid technical foundation, was another
form of Sachlichkeit. The Bauhaus, with its utopian
strivings and an aesthetic that still influences our own
notion of modernity, contributed to every area of life
until the apocalypse of Nazism and the Second World
War brought night over Germany.
Pablo Picasso, Femme assise dans un fauteuil
(Woman Sitting in an Armchair), 1909
dence of artistic borderlines had already made Germany a transit country for diverse international currents in the early 20th century. They all found an echo
in this unique collection. The masterpieces by
Corinth, Munch, Hodler, Lehmbruck, Kokoschka,
Kirchner, Pechstein, Nolde, Grosz, Dix, Schad, Querner,
Beckmann, Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, Feininger,
Gris, Dalí, Ernst, Picasso, Magritte, Léger, Belling,
Baumeister, Nay, and many more, form a pictorial
atlas that reflects the history of the city and country
in which the collection developed.