Art museums Krefeld

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Logo Kunstmuseen Krefels.gif
The Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, September 2005
House Esters (left), House Lange (right), March 2005

In three buildings, the Krefeld art museums are particularly dedicated to modern and contemporary art . Due to the early and consistent orientation, especially under the director Paul Wember , an international reputation could be earned since the late 1950s. In addition to the building of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum on Joseph-Beuys-Platz as the main building, the museum with the villa ensemble Haus Lange and Haus Esters on Wilhelmshofallee has presentation locations for special exhibitions. The museums have been managed by the former deputy director at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Katia Baudin, since September 1, 2016 .

history

The beginnings

In January 1882, the craftsmen and education association announced in a citizens' meeting: “It would be desirable that a museum should be set up in Crefeld that particularly represents the arts and crafts interests.” A museum commission was then founded, and a museum association was founded the following year. This then consisted of 32 members, including the mayor, the district administrator, the school council and several silk manufacturers. In the same year, the first exhibition of works of art from Krefeld's private collection was held in the town hall . In the 1880s, the museum association sought donations, objects and paintings as the basis for building a museum. In 1884 the city of Krefeld made the former school at Westwall 60 available free of charge. As early as 1897, the total value of the holdings was put at 112,000  marks . This comprised a Roman department, iron goods from the 15th to 18th centuries, Italian metalwork, furniture from the Lower Rhine, Rhenish stoneware, peasant pottery, German and Dutch faience , South German and French furniture from the Rococo and Empire, Italian furniture from the Renaissance and a picture gallery.

The museum on Karlsplatz

Exhibition poster by Alfred Mohrbutter

After the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1888, the idea was taken up to build a museum as a memorial to the deceased Kaiser instead of a memorial. Finally, the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum was built from 1894 to 1897 , and the north and south wings were added in 1910–1912. The basis of the new museum was the collection of Konrad Kramer from Kempen, who had collected Lower Rhine furniture, sculptures, glass paintings, stoneware, paintings and weapons since 1850 . The Krefeld city councilor Albert Oetker had bought the Kramer collection in good time before the museum opened and donated it.

The museum's first director was Dr. Friedrich Deneken . The collection was developed during his 25-year tenure. In an appeal, he writes: " The Kaiser Wilhelm Museum must preferably focus on the acquisition of newer art products" . For example, as early as 1900, 26 purchases laid the foundation for the poster collection that is important today. The acquisition of the Italian Renaissance collection from Adolf von Beckerath at the same time is all the more astonishing .

In 1922, Dr. Max Creutz successor to Friedrich Deneken in the office of museum director. While the focus was initially on modern arts and crafts, this has since been shifted more and more to the fine arts by the new museum director. In the first year of his tenure, which ended with his death in 1932, the Deutsches Museum was taken over by Karl Osthaus with works by Peter Behrens and Henry van der Velde . Furthermore, pictures by Campendonk , Liebermann and Kirchner were purchased. 1923 prompted Creutz creating four large murals age of Johan Thorn Prikker upstairs.

With Creutze's death in 1932, the museum began to stand still. Dr. Burghardt Freiherr von Lepel took over the management in 1933, but left again in 1936. During the tenure of Dr. Fritz Muthmann 1937–1943, so-called degenerate art was confiscated , and with it almost the entire inventory of modern works of art built by Max Creutz. Muthmann had the wall pictures of the Prikker walled up and thus saved them from destruction. The many purchases made during his term in office were reversed by the victorious powers after the war.

The museum, which was closed in 1942, survived the war unscathed and was initially shared by municipal offices and institutions.

The post-war years

In 1947 Paul Wember was appointed museum director. After the currency reform in 1948, Wember tried to purchase works of art from the 1930s with the limited funds available to him in order to expand and round off the existing focus of the collection. But also romantic drawings or impressionist paintings were bought to close the collection. In 1953 and 1954, sheets by Max Ernst , Yves Tanguy , Joan Miro , Matisse and Picasso , among others , could be acquired cheaply and so the importance of contemporary graphics increased within the collections. In 1955 Ulrich Lange made his childhood home, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1928 to 1930, available to the city of Krefeld for ten years as an exhibition space for contemporary art. Under Wember's direction, the Lange House became one of the leading exhibition venues for avant-garde art, so Yves Klein held his first and last museum retrospective here during his lifetime.

With a minimal purchase budget, the Krefeld Museum was not able to invest in classic modernism like the big houses. Wember therefore bought unknown contemporary art, including works by Yves Klein, Tàpies and Beuys , in 1959, for example, a first picture by Yves Klein for 500 DM or two pictures by Piero Manzoni for 200 DM. Wember used various contacts for exhibitions and purchases Gallery owners such as Michael Hertz, Alfred Schmela , Rolf Ricke , Rudolf Zwirner and Conny Fischer.

In 1960 the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum closed for an urgently needed general renovation, which, however, was to begin in 1966. At the end of the 10 years, the exhibition activities in Haus Lange ended for the time being in 1966, so both museums were closed.

Since 1969

In April 1969 the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum was able to reopen. Dr. Ulrich Lange, Haus Lange der Stadt with the requirement to show exhibitions of contemporary art here for 99 years. In 1975 Wember retired. In 1976 the city of Krefeld was able to acquire Haus Esters, the neighboring house of Haus Lange, which opened in 1981 as another exhibition institute for temporary exhibitions of contemporary art.

In 2010 the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum closed again for a fundamental renovation, which was carried out from 2012. When the work was completed, the first collection presentation, The Adventure of Our Collection I, opened on June 2, 2016  , and many works were presented to the public for the first time in over six years.

building

Kaiser Wilhelm Museum

The museum building was built in 1894–1897 in the style of eclecticism and expanded from 1910–1912 with north and south wings. The building remained undamaged in World War II and was rebuilt from 1966 to 1969. By removing the outside staircase and removing the imperial statue, the exhibition area could be expanded by almost 40%.

Between 2012 and 2016, the house was renovated again and equipped in accordance with international museum standards for climate and safety. The wall painting Age of Life by Jan Thorn Prikker, created in 1923, was made visible again.

House Lange / House Esters

West front of House Esters
Long house, garden side

Hermann Lange, art collector and director of the United Silk Weaving Mills (VerSeidAG), together with Dr. Josef Esters, also director of VerSeidAG, asked the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to design the houses for both families in 1927 . In the same year, Mies van der Rohe and his then partner Lily Reich had already set up the Velvet and Silk Café at the Berlin trade fair Die Mode der Dame on behalf of the Association of German Silk Weaving Mills based in Krefeld .

The two-storey villas, built between 1928 and 1931 in the classic modern style, extend into the site as flat structures consisting of nested cubes and dominant rows of windows. All south-facing windows of the house are designed as undivided glass surfaces, which can be sunk into the floor except for a low parapet height. This means that the separation between inside and outside can be temporarily removed. On the street side, however, the buildings appear relatively closed and compact. Inside, the room segments overlap.

Mies van der Rohe also designed the gardens for Haus Esters, presumably also for Haus Lange due to the similarity. Plants with wide lawns, straight paths and flowerbeds were created which, thanks to their geometry, follow the design language of the building. The gardens are part of the Route of Garden Art between the Rhine and Maas .

collection

The collection of the art museums in Krefeld comprises around 14,000 works from the fields of painting, sculpture, graphics, applied art, photography and new media.

Art before 1945

The older works in the museum are very much shaped by the history of the museum. A large number of donations and foundations from the early days form the basis. The Oetker collection mentioned above and the Kramer collection with medieval sculptures from the Lower Rhine should be mentioned here. As mentioned, the former Beckerath Collection forms a closed complex of Italian Renaissance art, including several high-quality sculptural works of the Quattrocento .

One focus is on paintings from the 19th century , including works by Franz von Lenbach , Wilhelm Leibl , Johann Wilhelm Schirmer , Hans Thoma and various artists from the Düsseldorf School of Painting. Particularly noteworthy is the Schadowkreis , a joint picture by Eduard Bendemann , Theodor Hildebrandt , Julius Hübner , Wilhelm von Schadow and Karl Ferdinand Sohn , created in Rome in 1830.

The Modern Art is, among other things through the marble sculpture Eva (1900) by Auguste Rodin and the image Parliament buildings in London (1904) by Claude Monet represented. The modern collection was torn apart in 1937 by the confiscations as part of the degenerate art. Heinrich Campendonk's Pierrot with Sunflower (1925) and the painting Kuhmelken (1913) by Emil Nolde were returned to the collection after the war. Some gaps were closed again after 1945 through targeted purchases. The museum has works by the German impressionists Max Slevogt, Lois Corinth and Max Liebermann, as well as works from Expressionism. The painting Deluge (1912) by Wassily Kandinsky Symphony Black-Red by Alexej von Jawlensky and a group of works by Heinrich Campendonk represent the Blue Rider . The constructivist works of Piet Mondrian , whose legal ownership has been discussed for some time, Theo van Doesburg and László Moholy-Nagy deserve special mention .

The group of works of Rhenish Expressionism is a specialty , with works by Heinrich Nauen , Helmut Macke and Johan Thorn Prikker.

Art after 1945

The collection has many new realists . Jean Tinguely , Arman , Raymond Hains , Jacques de la Villeglé and others enrich the collection as well as Yaakov Agam , Lucio Fontana , Adolf Luther , Piero Manzoni , Jesus Raphael Soto or Heinz Mack , Otto Piene and Günther Uecker . The house has a special history with Yves Klein, who held his first and only retrospective in Haus Lange. Due to the large number of works, Yves Klein forms a central artistic position alongside Joseph Beuys, which shapes the collection to this day. From the field of Pop Art , the museum can come up with works by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg , Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol . In the 1980s there was a turn to European positions, especially to artists from the Düsseldorf Academy , including pictures by Nicola de Maria and Norbert Prangenberg . In addition, works by Erwin Heerich , Hubert Kiecol , Abraham David Christian , Zvi Goldstein , David Rabinowitch , Richard Deacon , Didier Vermeiren, Rosemarie Trockel , Jan Vercruysse and others were collected. At the end of the 1990s, the collection was supplemented by paintings by Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke .

Joseph Beuys

With the Beuys block, the Krefeld art museums have a unique group of seven objects that the artist arranged himself in several stages. Beuys , who was born in Krefeld in 1921, was very closely associated with the museum. As early as 1952 he created the fountain, a commissioned work that he made for Krefeld Edelstahlwerke - mediated by Paul Wember, the museum director at the time . Up to the last purchase in 1976, 53 other works had come to Krefeld with the help of the artist. The central object is the installation Barraque D'Dull Odde , acquired in 1971 , a double shelf with a desk and seating, in which all relics of Beuys' artistic life can be found. In February 1977 Joseph Beuys dismantled the Barraque D'Dull Odde in two days and nights and rebuilt it in a newly designed exhibition room in which the windows were covered and painted completely white. All other Beuys works were then installed in the same room together with the artist. In 1984 Beuys completed it by adding a second room. Even during the renovation of the museum between 2012 and 2016, the ensemble remained in its original location.

In 2010 this unique group of works threatened to be torn apart when the collector Helga Lauffs withdrew her collection, which also included five works by Beuys, from the museum. With the help of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia , the works of art could be kept in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum.

Graphic collection

The Krefeld art museums have an extensive graphic collection with over 12,000 drawings, graphic works and artist books. The basis of this collection was established in the early years under the director Dr. Friedrich Deneken laid. The aim was to give an overview of the artistic development of the 19th century with individual sheets. But the first posters for the internationally populated poster collection, which now has over 1000 sheets, were also purchased. In 1923, the collection expanded suddenly with the takeover of the model collection of the German Museum for Art in Trade and Industry . These include designs by Peter Behrens, Henry van de Velde, the Steglitzer Werkstatt and the Wiener Werkstätten . At the same time, an extensive pool of Japanese woodblock prints was created. In the 1920s, sheets by Heinrich Campendonk, Erich Heckel , Käthe Kollwitz and Franz Marc became part of the collection. Even after the Second World War, special attention was paid to the graphic collection. For example, the art museums B. over 80 sheets by Picasso as well as works by Warhol, Beuys and Matisse. In the 1980s, works by Gerhard Richter , Nicola de Maria , Abraham David Christian , Mimmo Paladino , AR Penck and Norbert Prangenberg were added. In the 1990s, graphic works by artists such as Christian Boltanski , Bethan Huws , Anri Sala and Luc Tuymans entered the collection.

After the fundamental renovation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in 2016, the graphic collection has been given a permanent place. A graphic study cabinet has been set up where visitors can have sheets from the extensive collection presented to them upon request.

Exhibitions

Especially since Haus Lange has been available as an exhibition space, the Krefeld art museums have presented a whole series of highly regarded art exhibitions. Haus Lange and Haus Esters are often viewed by the artists themselves as a field of experimentation, in the spirit of the then director Paul Wember, who formulated: The form of exhibition must be different because art has become different ... We can no longer meet content with hanging pictures on the wall or placing sculptures on the pedestal. Large exhibitions by Alberto Giacometti , Alexander Calder , ZERO , Marcel Duchamps , Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg , Timm Ulrichs , Adolf Luther , Keith Sonnier , Abraham David Christian , Thomas Schütte , Gerhard Richter, Richard Deacon, Stan Douglas or Andreas Gursky looked back. Some artists let the examination of the buildings of Mies van der Rohe flow in a special way. Yves Klein started in 1961 with temporary pillars of fire, which he lit in the garden of the house, as well as a room of emptiness, a subsequently built-in room with a floor space of seven square meters, which he whitewashed grainy-white and which has remained unchanged to this day. In 1971, Haus Lange was covered with an air-supported structure by the Haus-Rucker-Co group for the exhibition Cover, Survival in a Polluted Environment . For the presentation Wrapped Floors and Wrapped Walk Ways, Christo laid out his lengths of fabric in the house and in the garden. In 2009, John Baldessari closed the large windows of Haus Lange with pictures of bricks for the exhibition BRICK BLDG, LG WINDOWS W / XLENT VIEWS, PARTIALLY FURNISHED, RENOWNED ARCHITECT .

  • 2017/2018: Haus Lange Exat 51 - Synthesis of the arts in post-war Yugoslavia .
  • 2017/2018: Haus Esters Jamina Cibic: Spirit of our Needs (curated by Katia Baudin ).
  • 2020: House of Esters Sharon Ya'ari. The Romantic Trail and the Concrete House .

literature

Web links

Commons : Kaiser Wilhelm Museum (Krefeld)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ WDR Kulturnachrichten from August 17, 2016: Deputy Director at Museum Ludwig Cologne appointed ( Memento from August 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b Dirk Senger: First Krefeld Museum in a former school on Westwall . In: Verein für Heimatkunde eV (Hrsg.): The home . tape 83/2012 . Krefeld 2012, p. 60 f .
  3. ^ A b c d Paul Wember: Art in Krefeld . M. DuMont Schauberg, 1973, ISBN 3-7701-0679-2 .
  4. ^ Krefeld museum history: the art museums . In: Annual report of Sparkasse Krefeld . Krefeld 1990.
  5. ↑ Max Creutz: The new monumental pictures Thorn-Prikkers in the Krefeld Kaiser Wilhelm Museum . , Art for everyone: painting, sculpture, graphics, architecture, March 1924, pp. 184–189
  6. ^ Art museums Krefeld. In: www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  7. ^ Irmgard Bernrieder: Culture in Krefeld | KWM 1960s. In: kultur-in-krefeld.de. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Gisela Fiedler-Bender: Paul Wember on his 100th birthday. In: Kunst und Krefeld e. V. (Ed.): Paul Wember. 100th birthday memories. Krefeld 2013, p. 25.
  9. ↑ Heinz Mack in conversation with Magdalena Broska. December 2008. In: Kunst und Krefeld e. V. (Ed.): Paul Wember on his 100th birthday. Krefeld 2013, p. 55f.
  10. ↑ a b In the Krefeld house Lange the windows go into the cellar | Monuments online. In: www.monumente-online.de. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  11. ↑ The Adventure of Our Collection I - Reopening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. (No longer available online.) In: art. Archived from the original on June 18, 2016 ; Retrieved June 18, 2016 . Info: The archive link was 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.art-magazin.de
  12. ↑ more lousy. 1928 | Bauhaus Online. (No longer available online.) In: bauhaus-online.de. Archived from the original on May 31, 2016 ; accessed on May 31, 2016 . Info: The archive link was 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 / bauhaus-online.de
  13. ↑ The garden. (No longer available online.) In: eghn.org. Archived from the original on May 31, 2016 ; accessed on May 31, 2016 . Info: The archive link was 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 / eghn.org
  14. ↑ http://www.nrw-museum.de/museen/kunstmuseen-krefeld-kaiser-wilhelm-museum-haus-lange-haus-esters.html. In: www.nrw-museum.de. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Stefan Koldehoff : Who do the Mondrians belong to? In: Die Zeit, March 8, 2018, p. 27
  16. ↑ 2016-05-11: 95th birthday of the artist Joseph Beuys | City of Krefeld. (No longer available online.) In: www.krefeld.de. Archived from the original on June 1, 2016 ; accessed on June 1, 2016 . Info: The archive link was 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.krefeld.de
  17. ^ Art museums Krefeld. In: www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de. Retrieved June 1, 2016 .
  18. ↑ 2016-05-11: 95th birthday of the artist Joseph Beuys | City of Krefeld. (No longer available online.) In: www.krefeld.de. Archived from the original on June 1, 2016 ; accessed on June 1, 2016 . Info: The archive link was 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.krefeld.de
  19. ^ Augsburger Allgemeine: Beuys work group secured for Krefeld. In: Augsburger Allgemeine. Retrieved June 1, 2016 .
  20. ↑ a b 2015-07-07: Art museums prepare exhibition of the graphic collection | City of Krefeld. (No longer available online.) In: www.krefeld.de. Archived from the original on June 3, 2016 ; accessed on June 3, 2016 . Info: The archive link was 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.krefeld.de
  21. ↑ a b Art Museums Krefeld. In: www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de. Retrieved June 3, 2016 .
  22. ↑ For him, the museum was a hyperactive training institute: The Paul Wember era and the Krefeld art museums. In: www.rheinische-art.de. Retrieved June 4, 2016 .
  23. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany: Art: "PICTURES ARE ONLY ASH" - DER SPIEGEL 46/1994. In: www.spiegel.de. Retrieved June 21, 2016 .