FROM MODERNISM TO THE PRESENT
COLLECTION PRESENTATION
FROM 23.4.23
ABENTEUER ABSTRAKTION is once again putting a significant part of the Sprengel Museum Hannover's collection on permanent display: 19 rooms are dedicated to abstract art from modernism to the present day. The centerpieces are the replicas of Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau and El Lissitzky's Cabinet of the Abstract. In addition, an area on the mezzanine floor focuses on art and artists in Hanover under National Socialism. The work "Unter dem Strand" by Lotte Lindner and Till Steinbrenner, specially conceived for the Sprengel Museum Hannover, is also a special acquisition by the Young Circle.
ADVENTURE ABSTRACTION
With ABENTEUER ABSTRAKTION, the Sprengel Museum Hannover is once again permanently showing a significant part of its collection in the fire-protected rooms in the basement. The exhibition, curated by Isabel Schulz and Julius Osman, reflects the quality and versatility of the museum's own collection and offers an overview of important manifestations and developments in non-objective art from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day as well as works from various genres and media: painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography and expansive media artworks and films unite "Abenteuer Abstraktion" in an unprecedented order.
Curator Isabel Schulz: "The exhibition, which reorganizes our collection, focuses on the essential achievement of modernism: the liberation of art from a depictive function. Here, our audience can experience the immense scope that abstraction offered for new questions and individual formal languages - and not least the importance of Hanover for its development."
The new collection presentation shows what has taken the place of imitation of nature in art since the beginning of the last century. It asks what motivations, questions and problems preoccupied artists who no longer worked in relation to objects and yet still acted within contemporary history. The aim is not to tell a complete history of the development of abstract art, says Isabel Schulz, but to convey an idea of individual decades and influential movements and tendencies.
The starting and central points of the tour are the replicas of El Lissitzky's Cabinet of the Abstract (1927) and Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau (1933). Both rooms, which once existed in Hanover, embody influential stages of abstract art and enable a direct experience of the interplay of color and form.
Alongside prominent works by Schwitters and Lissitzky, works by Piet Mondrian, Hans Arp and Paul Klee represent classical modernism. Works by Willi Baumeister, Pierre Soulages and K.O. Götz come from the post-war period. They lead on to contemporary artists, including Pia Fries, Pipilotti Rist and Wolfgang Tillmans. In addition to a graphic cabinet, visitors can also discover expansive media artworks and abstract films from the early days of the medium.
"The fact that the Sprengel Museum Hannover plays in the top international league in the art world is due not least to the numerous major works by protagonists of classical modernism such as Nolde, Léger, Klee, Lissitzky and Schwitters, which visitors encounter at the beginning of the new tour. In addition, there are essential works that have come to the museum thanks in particular to the Bernhard Sprengel and Friends Art Foundation and the Lower Saxony Savings Bank Foundation - including works by John Baldessari, Norbert Prangenberg and Katharina Grosse," says curator Isabel Schulz, who conceived the exhibition together with Julius Osman and in teamwork with the museum's respective departmental colleagues.
NEW WORK BY JULIUS VON BISMARCK
Part of the new collection presentation is also the expansive installation "One Solution Revolution" by Julius von Bismarck, which was acquired by the Sprengel Friends with the support of the Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation in 2022 and is now being presented for the first time.
Reinhard Spieler, Director of the Sprengel Museum Hannover: "In the neighborhood of El Lissitzky's "Cabinet of the Abstract" as an incunabulum of museum presentation, Bismarck makes an adequate statement for the museum in our present day. The work consists of treadmills that will inevitably take you out if you don't set yourself in motion. Even in a museum you have to move - just looking at it is not enough."
SETTING UP A SPACE FOR ACTION PLACING
Together with Year 13 pupils from the Tellkampf School, artists and art educators have designed a space for the new collection presentation "Abenteuer Abstraktion" (Adventure Abstraction) that invites visitors to participate and conveys the possibilities of non-representational design with color and form. Various elements invite visitors to engage with the theme of abstraction - to place, position and lay.
Idea, coordination and realization: Frank Rosenthal, artist; Jakob Spehr, artist and teacher at Tellkampfschule Hanover grammar school, Gabriela Staade, art educator at Sprengel Museum Hanover; Anette Walz, artist; video production: Tosh Leykum, visuathlete
ART AND ARTISTS IN HANNOVER DURING NATIONAL SOCIALISM
On the mezzanine floor of the museum, a further area opens, which has been fundamentally redesigned and is based on the research of a working group of the museum's curators. Using the example of nine people and historical events, the multimedia documentation sheds light on the situation of art and artists under National Socialism.
Julius Osman, curator of the Sprengel Museum Hannover: "The painful gaps torn by the dictatorship are particularly palpable in a museum that exhibits modern art. With the new exhibition area, we have dedicated ourselves to the twelve years of tyranny and its effects on the lives of selected individuals and institutions. Last but not least, the museum's own collection history also becomes more transparent here. The unusual exhibition architecture by Karsten Weber and the neospektiv team also conveys in an impressive way that we are part of the narrative when we look at history."
Publication
Volume XV, edited by Julius Osman, is published in the "Contributions to the Collection" series under the title "Art and Artists in Hanover under National Socialism". The texts are based on the wall texts of the museum presentation, in which the curators Annette Baumann, Karin Orchard, Julius Osman, Isabel Schulz (editor) and Paula Schwerdtfeger were involved.
Exhibition design mezzanine: Karsten Weber Studio and neospektiv (Anne-Cathrine Mosbach, Lara Bechauf-Nguyen, Felix Obermaier), Düsseldorf
LOTTE LINDNER & TILL STEINBRENNER: UNDER THE BEACH
In addition to the exhibition ABENTEUER ABSTRAKTION, a new work by the Hanoverian artists Lindner & Steinbrenner will be presented at the same time. For "Unter dem Strand", the duo sought and found a location in the Sprengel Museum Hannover: Located between the levels, the screening room, also known as the "aquarium" in the museum, had long been unused. As an alternative to the white cube, Lindner & Steinbrenner found the ideal place to take what an art museum aims to achieve ad absurdum: The art is alive, the tank filled, the space inhabited - by the frugal cave fish Astyanax Jordani, who, because he is blind, is not capable of contemplation.
Lindner & Steinbrenner, born in 1971 and 1967 respectively, are not restricted to specific media or genres. The duo often deal with found spaces and premises. For Lindner & Steinbrenner, spaces are both a place and a material to be dealt with. "Unter dem Strand" was purchased by the Young Circle with the support of the Friends of the Sprengel Museum Hannover e.V
Curators ABENTEUER ABSTRAKTION: Isabel Schulz and Julius Osman
