Our Classics III

11.01. - 29.02.2020

Einführung After the end of the war in 1945, the connection to artistic modernism was ultimately achieved by returning to the abstracting tendencies of the pre-war years. Art that had continued to develop in both external and internal emigration was once again able to develop freely. Three examples may illustrate this. Willi Baumeister's work continued in private after a ban on painting and exhibitions in 1941. He developed his paper "The Unknown in Art" (published in 1947) with which he wanted to show the nature and tasks of modern art and made an important contribution to strengthening post-war art. Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968), also ostracized and banned from his profession, found new inspiration for his path with fellow artist and patron Edvard Munch in the Lofoten Islands in Norway, a path that would eventually lead him to non-objective pictorial structures a decade later. Bernard Schultze (1915-2005) was a founding member of the artist group "Quadriga" in 1952, which is considered the starting point of informal painting. This group proved to be an important link to the pan-European art scene in the post-war decade and was formed simultaneously in Germany as well as in the neighboring countries of France, Spain, Italy and the USA. Schultze's pictorial world went far beyond Informel, for example with his fantastic "Migofs," unbridled proliferating sculptural formations. The new orientation offered opportunities and manifested itself in many ways, since the cultural gap that had arisen had to be closed. After the end of the war, abstraction had become synonymous with freedom and formed the international language of art.

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