Hans van der Grinten

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The tomb of the van der Grinten family designed by Joseph Beuys in the Kranenburg cemetery

Hans van der Grinten (born March 19, 1929 in Kranenburg (Niederrhein) , † May 22, 2002 in Essen ) was a German art collector , museum director, writer and visual artist. Together with his brother Franz Joseph van der Grinten , he built up an extensive art collection with more than 60,000 works from the 19th and 20th centuries and a collection of archival documents by and about Joseph Beuys of around 100,000 copies, handed over "in trust" , which is currently housed in the Museum Schloss Moyland in Bedburg-Hau .

Life

Hans van der Grinten was born in Kranenburg near the Dutch border not far from Nijmegen in 1929 . At the state high school in Cleve he had become acquainted with the fine arts and received private lessons from an artist in Kleve . From 1946 he started collecting art together with his younger brother. One of the first works that they bought was a lithograph by Käthe Kollwitz . Together they traveled to Paris to buy works of modern art with their pocket money. From 1945 to 1965 he worked as a farmer on his parents' farm.

Van der Grinten studied agriculture in Bonn from 1954 to 1956 and received his diploma in 1958. He studied art history in Bonn and continued his studies from 1960 to 1965. From 1964 to 1973 he worked as a lecturer at the seminar for craft education in Düsseldorf. From 1971 to 1974 he worked as a research assistant at the Municipal Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach under the direction of Johannes Cladders and between 1974 and 1991 as chief curator of modern art at the Museum Commanderie van Sint Jan in Nijmegen. From 1990 until his retirement at the age of 70 in 1999, he was artistic director at the Museum Schloss Moyland in Bedburg-Hau together with his brother.

In 1946, Hans and Franz Joseph van der Grinten met Joseph Beuys, who was a few years older, in the home of the English teacher Heinrich Schönzeler. Beuys, who received lessons from Schönzeler during his high school years, prepared with his son Ernst Schönzeler for the entrance exam for the Düsseldorf Academy. The van der Grinten brothers were advised to collect primarily contemporary art, including from Joseph Beuys, from the painter Hermann Teuber , who lived in Kalkar . They had seen Beuys' work for the first time in an exhibition in the BC Koekkoek-Haus in Kleve, but because of the rather 'exclusive' character of his work, it had never occurred to them to collect these works. Beuys was sympathetic to the plan so that one day, in June 1951, he came to visit the brothers in Kranenburg with a leather suitcase with drawings. They were allowed to make a selection from these drawings. After this, a friendly relationship with Joseph Beuys developed and the start of building up the collection of his works and archives until 1986.

Hans van der Grinten organized many exhibitions and often wrote an introduction to the exhibition catalogs. Hundreds of writings on contemporary art were created. At exhibition openings he was known as a phenomenal speaker who could apparently talk about the visual arts for twenty minutes or more 'impromptu'. As a visual artist, he had made drawings all his life and was for a time a member of the graphic association in Osterath ( etching community Osterath ), which mainly focused on making etchings. Hans van der Grinten died on May 22, 2002 at the age of 73 in Essen.

Van der Grinten collection

The collection of Hans and Franz Joseph van der Grinten grew over the years, beginning in 1946 with a modest approach to modern works of art, and from 1951, not least thanks to the advice and support of Joseph Beuys, to an extensive size. The brothers organized Joseph Beuys 'first solo exhibition, the so-called "stable exhibition", in the empty stables on their parents' farm in Kranenburg. The exhibition attracted a striking number of visitors from outside. The brothers also collected works by other artists, especially from the Lower Rhine . Beuys also advised them to collect photographs , English etchings and Art Nouveau . Through great persistence, knowledge, an open eye and many personal friendships with artists of his own generation, a collection of drawings, paintings, sculpture, plastic objects, graphics and art historical documentation was created. The works that the brothers acquired from Joseph Beuys are now an essential focus of the collection.

Moyland Castle Museum

Hans van der Grinten was the driving force behind the renovation of Moyland Castle . The castle had stood empty for years and fell into ruin as it was bombed and destroyed towards the end of World War II. Until the end of the 1980s, no interested donors could be found for the funds needed to rebuild the castle. In 1990 a foundation was established, into which the brothers brought their collection and the Baron van Steengracht brought in his castle and park. The federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia took over the costs for the renovation and repair. This is how the “Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland, Van der Grinten Collection, Joseph Beuys Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia” came into being. The museum opened in 1997 after a thorough reconstruction. The first presentation of the collection was directed by the two brothers and became known as the “Moyländer Hängung” (compared to the “Petersburg Hängung”). Characteristic were the walls, which were systematically covered from top to bottom with works of art, without numbering or explanatory texts. From April 2010 the main building of the museum was closed and remodeled. In autumn 2011 the collection was presented to the public with a new concept. The "Moyländer hanging" was dispensed with. The museum was transformed from a pure collector's museum to a museum about an art collection.

Joseph Beuys Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

In the 1950s, the brothers had reached an agreement with Beuys that his archival material , which he could no longer archive personally due to lack of space, could be kept with them in a “trust”. This laid the basis for today's “Joseph Beuys Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia”, which is currently housed in Moyland Castle in Bedburg-Hau. The "Joseph Beuys Archive" was established on July 10, 1990 in conjunction with the foundation and has been contractually linked to the former place of work of Joseph Beuys, the Düsseldorf Art Academy , as an independent institution since 1992 . As a scientific personal archive, its task is to preserve, develop and present its holdings as well as to collect new archive material relating to Joseph Beuys and his environment. The inventory includes a large collection of newspaper clippings, a collection of printed matter, a section with letters, especially to Joseph Beuys, a section with handwritten items, some audiovisual media and an area for everything else.

Honors

Hans van der Grinten was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia on November 23, 1992 .

literature

  • Elmar Hillebrand , sculptures and drawings , a documentation for the 8th stable house exhibition in the van der Grinten house, Kranenburg, Niederrhein, September 21 to October 1969.
  • Museum Schloss Moyland , Cologne, 1987, ISBN 3-7701-3947-X
  • Fifty years of the van der Grinten collection: 1946–1996 , Bedburg-Hau, 1999, ISBN 3-929042-22-3
  • Joseph Beuys Symposium Kranenburg 1995 , Basel, 1995, ISBN 3-909164-54-4
  • In memoriam Hans van der Grinten , Bedburg-Hau, 2003, ISBN 3-929042-31-2

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ a b c Süddeutsche Zeitung, No. 209, p. 13 (FEUILLETON), Tuesday, September 11, 2007
  2. ↑ Fifty Years of the Van der Grinten Collection: 1946–1996 , Bedburg-Hau, 1999, p. 172
  3. ^ Joseph Beuys Symposium Kranenburg 1995 , Basel 1995, pp. 345, 357
  4. ^ Joseph Beuys Symposium Kranenburg 1995 , Basel 1995, p. 345
  5. ↑ Andreas Daams: Hot autumn in Moyland. The West , September 11, 2007, accessed January 24, 2009 .
  6. ^ The Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation - Van der Grinten Collection - Joseph Beuys Archive of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spezialbibliothek.de
  7. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Grin, Hans van der
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, art collector and artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Kranenburg (Lower Rhine)
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 2002
Place of death eat