Cologne art market
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The Cologne art market was one of the oldest art fairs in Europe for modern art . The first event took place in 1967 with eighteen exhibitors in the Gürzenich in Cologne . It was the forerunner of today's Art Cologne .
history
The initiative to found a fair for modern art came from Hein Stünke , who ran the gallery and workshop for art objects Der Spiegel in Cologne . Together with his young colleague Rudolf Zwirner , he initiated the Association of Progressive German Art Dealers in order to be able to negotiate with the city of Cologne on an institutional level. The association was entered in the register of associations in autumn 1966 with initially seven founding members, in addition to Stünke and Zwirner (Cologne) these were Alfred Schmela , Hans-Jürgen Niepel and Günter Pooch (Düsseldorf), Dieter Brusberg (Hanover) and Rudolf Springer (Berlin).
The city of Cologne provided the Gürzenich for the first event. The first Cologne art market was opened on September 12, 1967 with 18 exclusively German participants and lasted until September 16. In addition to the founding members, the exhibitors were primarily Otto Stangl , Otto van de Loo and Raimund Thomas from Munich, Rolf Ricke from Kassel, René Block from Berlin and the only 27-year-old Op Art gallery owner Hans ("Hänschen") Mayer , who reported that all of his expectations of the art fair had been exceeded on the first day. The first art market had 15,000 visitors and a million DM in sales.
For the time, elaborately produced, large-format trade fair catalogs were published for all markets. For a “luxury edition”, the participating artists contributed numbered and hand-signed prints , which, combined in a folder, were offered to visitors during the days of the fair, the proceeds of which were used to finance the events.
The markets from 1967 to 1973
The first Cologne Art Market 67 took place from September 13 to 16, 1967 in Gürzenich. As with all fairs up to 1973, the sponsor was the Association of Progressive German Art Dealers based in Cologne. The openings were celebrated on the previous evening.
The 2nd Cologne Art Market 68 was held in the Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle from October 15 to 20, 1968. Denise René (Paris), Hans Neuendorf (Hamburg), Rolf Ricke , Alfred Schmela, Otto van de Loo , Stünke with Der Spiegel and Zwirner were among the galleries, some of whom were represented for the first time .
The 3rd Cologne Art Market 69 took place again from October 14th to 19th, 1969 in the Kunsthalle Köln and had a spectacular work to show: René Block presented a new work by Joseph Beuys at his stand : The pack (the pack) was in It was made in the same year and showed a closed VW bus , built in 1961, as well as 24 wooden sleds , each of which was equipped with grease, felt blankets , belts and flashlights . While the exhibition was being set up, Block had seen a large picture by Robert Rauschenberg that was awarded DM 110,000 and decided “... that the sculpture by Beuys should cost as much as a large picture by Rauschenberg or Warhol .” He also set this price for Beuys -Plastic on. On the last day of the fair, the group of objects was bought by Jost Herbig, who holds a doctorate in chemistry and who built up an art collection as the heir to the Herbol-Werke paint factory in Cologne . Beuys' work was the first work of contemporary German art to be sold for over DM 100,000.
The 4th Cologne Art Market 70 was held again in the Cologne Art Gallery and took place from October 13th to 18th, 1970. Participants included, for the first time, Appel & Fertsch and Ursula Lichter with Rochus Kowallek (Frankfurt am Main), Godula Buchholz, Van de Loo, Thomas (Munich), Hans-Jürgen Müller, Winfried Reckermann , Rolf Ricke, Michael Werner , Dieter Wilbrand (all Cologne), Maria Rothe (Heidelberg), ME Thelen (Essen).
An uproar arose when the artist Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell , Klaus Staeck and the gallery owner Helmut Rywelski (gallery art intermedia ) on October 12, the opening day in a spectacular action under the title "We are entering the art market" Admission for Coveted fair. They knocked loudly on the glass door, which had previously been locked by Zwirner, protesting “against the further cementing of a sales monopoly that the 'Association of Progressive Art Dealers' has acquired and that has been promoted by the Cologne city administration for four years now, among other things. a. by letting the art gallery and the rooms of the art association free of charge ”as well as the resulting exclusivity of the fair. As in all art markets, the number of exhibitors - and thus the represented artists - was severely limited by the organizer. The protesters were finally given access by Kurt Hackenberg , head of the Cologne cultural affairs department , after discussions had taken place through the closed glass doors for about 30 minutes.
The 5th Cologne Art Market 71 took place from October 5th to 10th, 1971. Among the 34 exhibiting galleries were, besides Brusberg, Neuendorf, Niepel, Ricke, Schmela, van de Loo, Der Spiegel and Zwirner, the foreign participants Ileana Sonnabend (Paris, New York), Gian Enzo Sperone (Turin), Denise René (Paris , New York), Wide White Space (Antwerp). Leo Castelli (New York) only showed three monumental pictures.
For the first time, the art market faced serious competition with the International Art and Information Fair (IKI), which was taking place at the same time and which was organized by the association of the same name in the Cologne Adult Education Center. 66 galleries, thirteen of them from abroad, took part in the IKI under its chairman Ingo Kümmel . On the Neumarkt in Cologne, the Association of Visual Artists North Rhine-Westphalia had a large tent erected in which two hundred members of this association presented their works. Less successful German art fairs in the same year were Pro Art 71 in Duisburg, Art Information 71 in Kiel's Ostseehalle and the Göttingen art market .
The 6th Cologne Art Market 72 ( Cologne Art Fair 1972, Cologne Foire d'Art 1972 ) was held from October 3 to 8, 1972 in the Kunsthalle. Represented galleries included: Art & Project (Amsterdam), Brusberg (Hanover), André Emmerich (New York), van de Loo (Munich), Studio Marconi (Milan), Neuendorf (Hamburg, Cologne), Springer, Reinhard Onnasch ( Berlin), Zwirner, Block, the video gallery Gerry Schum , Enzo Sperone (Turin), Wide White Space, Konrad Fischer (Cologne) and Leo Castelli.
The seventh Cologne Art Fair 73 had from September 29 to October 6, 1973 as a participant Brusberg, Heiner Friedrich , Paul Maenz , Niepel, Denise René, Der Spiegel , Springer, Hans Strehlow (Dusseldorf), Heinz Teufel (Bonn), Rudolf Zwirner and many more. During the days of the fair, the Association of Progressive German Art Dealers decided to found and transform it into a European art dealers' association in order to take on the Cologne art fair more internationally in the following year.
International art market Cologne
The eighth art market event was held in 1974 as the Cologne International Art Market . The conceptual sponsor was the European Art Dealers Association (EKV) , which was newly registered on December 18, 1973 . The Cologne trade fair company acted as the organizer and provided the historic halls 1 and 2 on the Deutz exhibition grounds. The group of participants, which has meanwhile grown to eighty domestic and foreign galleries, was able to spread the works of art on offer over around 10,000 square meters. The EKV's first prize was awarded on the occasion of the trade fair by Alfred H. Barr , the founding director of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), whom Zwirner had already met in 1959 during his time as general secretary of documenta II .
On September 9, 1975, the spokesman for the International Art and Information Fair (IKI), Alexander Berswordt-Wallrabe (Galerie m, Bochum) and Rudolf Zwirner from the European Art Dealers Association (EKV) invited to the founding event of a joint gallery owners' association. The 37 participants decided to found the Federal Association of German Galleries . The Cologne Art Market was merged with the IKI to form the International Cologne Art Market 1975 , which took place at the Cologne exhibition center in Cologne-Deutz . The new association acted as the ideal sponsor, while the Cologne trade fair company was again the professional organizer. Today the art fair calls itself Art Cologne .
literature
- Nicolai B. Kemle: Art fairs: admission restrictions and antitrust law , Walter de Gruyter, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89949-338-2 , p. 19 ff
- Günter Herzog, Brigitte Jacobsen: Art Market Cologne '67: Origin and Development of the First Fair for Modern Art , 1966–1974, Central Archive of the International Art Trade, 2003, ISBN 978-3-9809092-0-4
- Günter Herzog u. a .: Richter, Polke, Lueg & Kuttner: right at the beginning , Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg 2004, ISBN 978-3-936711-70-7 , p. 15
Web links
- Günter Herzog: The Cologne Art Market '67: From the Central Archive 22 , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 29, 2003
Individual evidence
- ^ Günter Herzog: The Cologne Art Market '67: From the Central Archive 22 , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 29, 2003
- ↑ Open letter from Joseph Beuys, HP Alvermann, Klaus Staeck, Wolf Vostell, Helmut Rywelski from September 24, 1970. In: Götz Adriani, Winfried Konnertz , Karin Thomas: Joseph Beuys . DuMont, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-7701-3321-8 , p. 112
- ↑ Zadik presents Joseph Beuys in a special show at Art Cologne ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on: BVDG website
- ^ Art market: No noise , in: Der Spiegel, No. 42/1971 of October 11, 1971
- ↑ Günter Herzog ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Art Cologne - The history of the first fair for modern art , on the Art Cologne website
