Expressionismus hier und jetzt!

In the organizer's words:

The Horn Collection as a guest in Dortmund

Museum Ostwall in the Dortmunder U shows important works of Expressionism in dialogue with contemporary works

With more than 120 central works of Expressionism, including works by Alexej von Jawlensky, Käthe Kollwitz, the Brücke artists' association and Christian Rohlfs, the renowned Bettina and Rolf Horn Collection will be on display in Dortmund for the first time from October 28, 2023 to February 18, 2024.

At Museum Ostwall, the museum's own collection holdings and contemporary works, supplemented by works from the Kirchner Museum Davos as well as photographic and archival material, enter into a dialogue with the Horn Collection. The focus is on a contemporary historical view from today's perspective, questioning the relationship between past, present, and future from a decolonial perspective. With works by Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Lisa Hilli, Natasha A. Kelly, Moses März, and Luiza Prado, the Dortmund exhibition presents current perspectives on "Expressionism here and now!", lets Dortmund citizens and initiatives have their say in video interviews, and invites visitors to experience selected works in the context of Black German history and themes such as industrialization, technical progress, war, and nature.

Over six decades, the couple Bettina and Rolf Horn collected primarily works of German Expressionism, whose powerful formal language and imagery embodied for them a new artistic conception of man and nature. From the very beginning, woodcuts by the Brücke artists' group and works by Käthe Kollwitz were among the centerpieces of their collection. Soon, paintings by Alexej von Jawlensky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde and Christian Rohlfs were added. Housed at the Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig since 1988, the important exhibits will now go on tour in 2023/2024 due to extensive construction work. The Museum Ostwall in the Dortmunder U is the second stop on an international exhibition tour, after the Kirchner Museum Davos and before the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg in Halle.