Information Sheet
THE COLLECTION
Classic Works, Discoveries and New Positions
New Hanging from 5 February 2016
Content
Exhibition Facts …………………………………………………………………………..3
Press Text ……………………………………………………………………………………4
Exhibition Booklets .……………………………………………………………………………..5
Press Images………………………………………………………………………………..14
Exhibition Facts
Exhibition TitleTHE COLLECTION
Classic Works, Discoveries and New Positions
Exhibition PeriodFrom 5 February 2016
OpeningThursday, 4February 2016, 7 pm
Press ConferenceThursday, 4February 2016, 10:30am
Exhibition VenueLENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, upper floor
CuratorsStella Rollig, Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller, Brigitte Reutner, Magnus Hofmüller as well as the artists Özlem Altin, Verena Dengler, Hans Kupelwieser and ekw14,90
ExhibitsMore than 160 exhibits from the LENTOS Collectionas well asan on-line media artwork
Exhibition BookletThere is an exhibition booklets available with information. Their purpose is to facilitate the visitors’ individual approach to the artworks.
ContactErnst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz, Tel. +43(0)732/7070-3600; ,
Opening HoursTue–Sun 10am to 6pm, Thur 10am to 9pm, Mon closed
Admission€ 8; concessions € 6
Press ContactKatharina Paulischin-Prammer, T +43(0)732.7070.3646,
Available at the Press Conference:
Bernhard Baier, Deputy Mayor and Head of Municipal Department of Culture
Stella Rollig, Director LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz and Curator
Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller, Head of Collection LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, Brigitte Reutner, Collection of graphics, photography and Magnus Hofmüller, Curator ekw14,90
Press Text
Its permanent collection is the centre piece of every museum and at theLENTOS, it is the reservoir we draw on for periodically new presentations ofour treasures. Objects that have never been on display before find their wayfrom the depot to the exhibition halls, works by well-known artists are putinto unexpected, challenging new contexts: a thrilling tour d’ horizon acrossart history, featuring outstanding masterpieces, new artistic statements andsurprising encounters.
The LENTOS is committed to an active dialogue with its artists. Here, theselection of works for a new presentation is not the exclusive domain of artexperts: artists have their say as well. Three rooms of the Permanent Collectionare curated by artists – Özlem Altin, Verena Dengler and Hans Kupelwieser –who combine at least one of their own works with their personal selection fromthe LENTOS’s holdings.
The new presentation of the Collection includes an on-line media artwork.The artists' collective ekw14,90 select works from the Collection and post their reactions to them on the works' own W-LAN net.
The emphasis is on the history of the Collection, on expressionism and NewObjectivity, Art Informel, Pop Art and contemporary positions. Adhering to itsmotto of Too good to hide, the LENTOS continues to present new discoveriesand classic works from its graphics holdings.
The presentation includes works by Herbert Bayer, VALIE EXPORT, Gottfried Helnwein, Gustav Klimt, Jiri Kolár, Maria Lassnig, GabrieleMünter, Egon Schiele and Andy Warhol, adding up to a comprehensive,multifaceted survey of 150 years of art production.
Exhibition Booklet Texts
How it all started. Wolfgang Gurlitt and his friends
In November 1946, the Berlin art dealer Wolfgang Gurlitt (1888–1965) loaned his private art collection to the City of Linz and put his enthusiasm and his expertise at the disposal of an exciting new project: the Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz. The first exhibition, dedicated to Alfred Kubin, took place in June 1947. In 1951 came Gurlitt’s Kokoschka exhibition and was hailed as nothing short of sensational. Gurlitt befriended a great number of famous artists and arranged exhibitions of their works at his gallery in Berlin.
In 1953, the core holdings of the Neue Galerie and of today’s LENTOS Kunstmuseum – 84 paintings and 33 graphic works – were acquired by the City of Linz from Wolfgang Gurlitt.
Many artists who are highly esteemed today were reviled as “degenerate” by the Nazis. From 1937 onwards, their works were removed from German museums and collections and sold via art dealers or auction houses. Artists who fell under the Nazi interdict remained marginalized and grossly underappreciated well into the 1950s.
Having the Gurlitt Collection as the core of its holdings is a mixed blessing for the LENTOS. The works of art are splendid in themselves but there are certain associated problems. To this day Gurlitt’s role during the Nazi era is controversial. Those who are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt regard him as an art lover who came to the aid of distressed Jewish collectors, others see him as an opportunist who exploited the loopholes of a fundamentally flawed regime. Wolfgang Gurlitt is the cousin of the art historian and art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. The collection of Hildebrand’s son, Cornelius Gurlitt, has been making headlines in recent years on account of the as yet unresvolved provenance of quite a few of the artworks.
Research is continuing at the LENTOS aimed at establishing provenance for all objects in the Gurlitt Collection and at returning looted and doubtfully acquired works of art to their original owners or their legal heirs. The provenance of looted and doubtfully acquired works of art that passed through Wolfgang Gurlitt’s hands during WWII has repeatedly been addressed in exhibitions and has been publicised in the captions attached to such works in the museum and in several pertinent publications. Since 2003, 13 works have been restituted, including the two portraits by Anton Romako that had remained in the Museum on permanent loan.
Verena Dengler: Self-portrait bearing no resemblance
Verena Dengler, who was born in Vienna in 1981, belongs to the generation of digital natives. For artists who can claim that label, digitisation is as natural as life with and in social media. The supreme source of information is the smartphone, whose social media applications make the diffusion of individual statements and content not only possible but imperative.
Dengler’s attention, which has been honed by interactivity, and her critical attitude provide the basis for an artistic oeuvre that deliberately pushes monumentality, closed forms, unambiguous messages and formal to the backburner. What is inscribed in Dengler’s work is her feminist take on the art scene which continues to privilege the competition between male egoes.
The artist links objects she has found in the course of her forays in the media and in urban environments to past and present, revealing power structures, prejudices and cultural codes. Self-made objects and found objects are placed side by side without ranking them and paintings and drawings are found next to pieces of embroidery and collages. The sculpture Germany vs. Austria is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the classic arrangement of plinth and sculpted portrait head. Neo-Classicism meets postwar modernity meets fashion history in a tangle of hints gesturing toward middleclass dreams of upward mobility. These dreams have the odds stacked as massively against them as is the case with Austria when it confronts Germany on the soccer field. The photo tapestry is a work for which Dengler has collaborated with the Swiss artist Yoan Mudry*. In its upper part, which bears Dengler’s imprint, Barack Obama is greeted by the “true leader of the nation”. Beyoncé** will retain her place when Obama will long have receded into history.
Dengler’s selection from the LENTOS Collection emphasises (self-) portraits and figurative representations as combinations of portrait and object. The artist focuses on removing the boundary separating the self and its ambience. The title she has given to the room is borrowed from a work by the Linz artist Margit Palme, which, as might be expected, is also on display.
* Yoan Mudry, b. 1990 in Lausanne
** Beyoncé: U.S American R&B and pop singer, actress and song writer
You need to come face to face with yourself. From Expressionism to New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
“Never was any period so shaken by horror, by such dread… Art cries out, too, cries in the depths of darkness, cries for help, cries for the spirit: that is Expressionism.“
This is how the writer Hermann Bahr described in 1916 art in a world that had been thrown out of joint by the First World War. In a basic mood fraught with apocalyptic overtones practitioners in all fields of art strove for a primeval quality in their work. They attempted to depict their feelings and ideas by distorting visible reality. Expressionism, which originated in Germany, aimed to smash up traditional forms. Its trademark use of non-naturalistic colours serves to heighten expressivity often to breaking point. The focal points of German Expressionism were Dresden with Die Brücke (1905−1913), a group of artists represented here by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller and Max Pechstein; Berlin with the Secession and a more informal group, Der Sturm, founded in 1910 by Herwarth Walden, which included Oskar Kokoschka; and Munich with Der Blaue Reiter (1908−1913), which enlisted Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin among others.Expressionists do not describe human beings or landscapes, they aim to experience them. Rather than concerning themselves with the sober rendition of reality they reduce forms and colours to basics, exploit contrast and spatial effect in their pictures and lay bare innermost emotions.
1918, one of the most fateful years in Austria’s history, sees the demise of the Habsburg Empire. Austria’s art scene loses Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele to death and Kokoschka to emigration to Germany, a development that deprived it of its most important artists.
The artists belonging to the New Objectivity movement attempt to render reality in an objective, precise manner. Albin Egger-Lienz, Sergius Pauser, Oskar Laske or Franz Sedlacek, all of them loners, are representative of this movement which flourished in the interwar period.
Portraits by Alfred Wickenburg, Helene Funke and Anton Kolig’s drafts for the Iron Curtain of the Festspielhaus in Salzburg complete this tour d’horizon through Austrian and German art in the first half of the 20th century.
Özlem Altin: Untitled (touch or melancholy)
Özlem Altin is interested above all in concepts of the body, mainlyly in gesture, contact and touch. Over the years the artist, who was born in Goch/Germany in 1977, has built up her own extensive collection of pictures. For her current work she draws on this archive of pictures and picture sections to redeploy them in collages composed in an associative manner. For other works she isolates details of found pictures and enhances their effect by enlarging them. Some photographs are themselves staged. Altin’s oeuvre does not distinguish between photos she has found and others that she has made herself. What is striking is her treatment of faces. These are either not shown at all or are turned away from the observer or in the background so that the personality of the individual with its history is not accorded any explicit role. Altin’s oeuvre also features painting, often in the form of spatial installations. The observer’s body enters into a relationship with the body images on display.
In the two rooms at the LENTOS curated by Altin a certain mood of exhaustion is dominant, the sense of a pause devoid of expression. In her diptych Untitled (Girl in tree) gravity visibly exerts a downward pull on the limp body. Figures lying down are a recurrent motif related to sleep and, ultimately, to death. This leads us to the well-known cemetery Père Lachaise in Paris in the company of Paul Albert Leitner. The imperative gesture with which Beneschseniorreins in his son (Egon Schiele: Double Portrait Heinrich and Otto Benesch) is the most powerful movement in a thematic panorama, where, in André Kertész’s photos (Chez Mondrian) and in photos by Elfie Semotan (Fetzen/Rags) the evidence of humankind’s physical presence has either been eradicated altogether or is only there in forlorn traces.
Is art logical? Geometry and abstraction
Between 1972 and 2000, Edgar Knoop taught Experimental Theory of Colours at the Munich Akademie der bildenden Künste, experimenting with light, colour systems, colourimetry and the theory of colour contrasts. His early colour systematic works called Tafelbilder mark the beginnings of his dedicated theoretical research. Two squares broken up into smaller rectangles by proportional shifts create contrasts, spatial illusions and the illusion of depth. An object made of plexiglass, a wavy colour profile consisting of neon-lit staves, constitutes a mysterious spatial link between the two pictures.
Herbert Bayer, too, made colour theory the basis for his work as an artist. Bayer, who taught at the Bauhaus, was fascinated by geometry and by Goethe’s Theory of Colours, by nature and the cosmos. His large-scale painting Suspended Secrets (Schwebende Geheimnisse) depicts the free interplay of geometrical, interlinked shapes. Squares, triangles, circles, an ellipse and segments drift through the infinite spaces of the universe. Sun, moon and stars are significant elements in Bayer’s geometrically dominated pictorial world. The years he spent working on his World Geographic Atlas added new dimensions to his understanding of Nature.
“Is art logical?“, “Time is the sum total of chunks of information” – these are only two of the provocative statements that are associated with the maverick Hermann Painitz. His Graphisches Alphabet submits sign systems to an intense scrutiny. 156 individual glass-framed depictions of geometrical figures all relate to Goethe’s Theory of Colours. The table desk with its 26 elements is bound to be helpful in resolving the puzzle. Have you spotted the solution of the rebus in the last individual picture?
Pop icons
Pop Art, which had its origins in the 1950s in England and United States, is here seen at its climax: Claes Oldenburg announces: “I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum” and Andy Warhol asserts that for him “Monroe is a person like any other“. Warhol, who began as a commercial illustrator, found his subjects in advertising. He made use of everyday objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and a still from the film Niagara, in which Marilyn Monroe played the female lead role.
In 1967 Warhol published the Marilyn portfolio, comprising 10 screen prints in a edition of 250 copies. Using colour substitution and the reduction to a mask-like appearance, he turned Marilyn, who had unexpectedly died in 1962, and Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, into pop icons.
Where media photos figured as points of departure for Warhol, Franz Gertsch projects his slides on a screen. What seems to a be photo when seen from a distance turns out, on closer inspection, to be a painting. The French pilgrimage destination Saintes Maries de la Mer, where Sinti and Roma from all over the world congregate in May, is emblematic not only of segregation but also of French joie de vivre.
Christo reveals by concealing. The artist first called the traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture in question during his time in Paris. As part of Vienna’s Super Summer in 1976 he was invited to wrap the Flak tower in the city’s Esterhazy Park. Unfortunately, this project, which would have enabled Vienna to attract the international art world’s attention, was not realised. Peter Baum, then director of the Neue Galerie, managed at least to secure the collaged city and location plan for Linz. The stir caused by Christo’s and Jeanne Claude’s wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin briefly revived the Flak tower project in 1995 before it was again aborted.
Linear structures
Transfixed by the plotter pen or caught on camera: monochrome graphics or photographs tend to direct the focus toward the line. Such works are particularly well suited to render phenomena of time and space. In terms of content, the selected artworks oscillate between imaginative creativity and construction.
Gunter Damisch, Pierre Alechinsky and Othmar Zechyr subject the creation myth to formal analysis. Drawings by Hans Jascha and Bertram Castell offer insights about landscapes. A photograph by Josef Sudek features an urban vista in Prague. Julie Monaco’s heliogravure of a seascape, on the other hand, is constructed through the exclusive use of virtual means. A series of drawings by Hauenschild/Ritter entitled Köpfe (Heads) is a set of variations on themes of technological construction and machine aesthetic. Martha Jungwirth’s drawing Indesit deals with what her Italian dishwasher has on offer for the eye.
Eduardo Chillida, for his part, gives wind a visible form in Aizatu III. Ulrich Waibel’s drawing foregrounds Time, which is made visible as change in the linear dynamics of the picture: Morgen – die kommende Zeit (Tomorrow – Time in the Making). In Josef Wais’ and Dieter Appelt’s photographic cycles light is on the move across the depicted space as a dimension of temporality.Branco Andrič goes even further. His drawing lends visibility to an object outside traditional human perception. Similarly, Dorothee Golz's work Lebensentwurf 2004 (Life Plan 2004) focuses on a blue print of how we, as men and/or women, devise our life plans.
Too good to hide
At present, the holdings of the LENTOS’s graphic arts collection comprise around 13,500 items. All kinds of works on paper are subsumed under the term graphic arts in this context.