Colourful and liberating
Works by Erich Heckel, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and others
Shortly after 1900 a young generation of painters conquered new artistic territory. They included the Brücke group, founded in 1905, who selected their motifs and colours in a radically subjective, risk-taking way. Their vibrant imagery was the bold manifestation of a new, dynamic attitude to life – and a provocation to the bourgeois public.
Osthaus Museum Hagen, photo: A. Kukulies
The expressionist collection of the Osthaus Museum Hagen reveals how liberating, vigorous and colourful the emergence of modernism was. Founded in 1902 by Karl Ernst Osthaus as the world’s first museum for contemporary art, it quickly became a Mecca for progressive artists and art lovers. After the end of the Second World War the museum was able to build on its legendary reputation and once again bring together a high-quality collection centring on expressionism in all its different facets – today the collection is considered one of the best of its kind in Germany.
With sixty masterpieces from the Osthaus Museum Hagen, this exhibition presents the well-known protagonists of German expressionism; the artistic groups Brücke and Blauer Reiter are represented with significant works. Several sculptures round off the survey.
In cooperation with Osthaus Museum Hagen and Institut für Kulturaustausch Tübingen.