fluchtbewegungen. Geflüchtete Künstler:innen im 20. Jahrhundert

In the organizer's words:

Under the title "fluchtbewegungen", the exhibition brings together around 40 works from the museum's own collection. The biographies of the artists reflect the diverse causes of flight and exile in the 20th century. During the Nazi regime, Jews fled throughout Europe, as did social minorities, communists, democrats and liberals. The Jewish artist Jankel Adler managed to escape to England, Otto Freundlich's art was branded as degenerate and he himself was murdered in a concentration camp.

The German artists who came to West Germany from the Soviet occupation zone after the end of the war form a separate group. From 1952, refugees from East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania received special support from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in the form of purchases, which was extended to refugees from the GDR from 1956 and continued until 1981. Works by Gerhard Hoehme, 21 works by the expressionist Ernst Mollenhauer and over 20 works by Hans-Albert Walter from all creative phases were added to the collection. The resulting collection was handed over to the Kunsthaus NRW by the Ministry in 2023 and will be successively processed.

The artists who fled the GDR include Gerhard Richter, Günther Uecker, Karin Götz (Rissa) and Georg Herold. László Lakner, Attila Kovács and Magdalena Jetelowá came to the Rhineland from other Eastern Bloc countries. After 1989, the so-called Wende, Thea Djordjadze fled from the civil war in Georgia to North Rhine-Westphalia. The refugee movements continue.

The exhibition closes with Marcel Odenbach's film "Im Schiffbruch nicht schwimmen können" (2011). It shows three African refugees looking at a painting of shipwrecked people in the Louvre in Paris: "The Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore Géricault, painted in 1819.

Works from the collection: Jankel Adler, Thea Djordjadze, Winfred Gaul, Gerhard Hoehme, Magdalena Jetelová, Attila Kovács, Milan Kunc, László Lakner, Ernst Mollenhauer, Marcel Odenbach, Sigmar Polke, Rissa and others.

Curator: Marcel Schumacher