VK

Willi Baumeister und Paul Klee – Struktur und Vision
– shades of black – Grafik der Nachkriegszeit
4. Oktober 2015 – 10. Januar 2016

opening speeches:  Dr Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy (director, Franz Marc Museum) and Dr. Christine Hopfengart (art historian, Berlin) and Dr Iris Nocker, Professor at LMU.

A beautiful rainy morning visit, preview at the Franz Marc Museum.  Nestling in picturesque natural surroundings the Museum has been presenting Franz Marc’s work within the context of the 20th century in its new building since 2008.

Despite their age difference of just ten years, Paul Klee (1879–1940) and Willi Baumeister (1889–1955) seem to belong to two different generations.
While Klee is to be included among the early avant-garde of the 20th century, Baumeister is associated with the rebirth of modernism in Germany after World War II in particular.
In the process the paths they took often ran parallel.Both painters followed tendencies in abstraction marked by a joy in experimenting with a wide-range of techniques. Their spezial interest in natural, organic forms and new, alien pictorial worlds also makes a comparison between Willi Baumeister and Paul Klee and their artistic developments especially fascinating.     Based on the major, representative holdings of works by Klee and Baumeister in  the Franz Marc Museum, the exhibition explores the dialogue between the two painters and highlights the common ground they shared. (museum press) 

….In the modern exhibition building, which expands the old building with an exhibition area of 700 m2, the work of Franz Marc can be put into a new context. His oeuvre, represented beforehand solely by the collection of the Franz Marc Foundation, can be contrasted with the work of his contemporaries like the “Brücke” artists thanks to the addition of the collection of the Etta and Otto Stangl Foundation. In dialogue with works of German post-war abstraction, Franz Marc can also be appreciated in terms of his effect on the art of the second half of the 20th century. (virtual view of the museum)

Right next to the old building, which housed the Franz Marc Museum for twenty years, came the new building which is home not only to the inventory of the Franz Marc Museum but also the collection of Etta and Otto Stangl.

Etta and Otto Stangl with Maria Marc, around 1950

photos@VK