| EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS OF ITALY / FROM RODIN TO PICASSO – THE RELIEF IN ART / HOLBEIN, BURGKMAIR, DÜRER, AND THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE / CONTEMPORARY ART BY PHILIPP FÜRHOFER, UGO RONDINONE, VICTOR MAN, AND MIRON SCHMÜCKLE The year begins with Images of Italy – an exhibition featuring early photographic masterpieces of Italy. Gondoliers on the Grand Canal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the antiquities of Rome: numerous photographs by Giorgio Sommer, the Alinari brothers’ company, Carlo Naya, and Robert Macpherson, among others, shaped the image of Italy as a place of longing. From 23 February to 3 September, the Städel Museum collection will present a selection of 90 early photographs of Italy from 1850 to 1880. The works of the artist Philipp Fürhofer exist at the interface between installation and painting. In his light boxes, layers of paint bursts reveal questions regarding the existential, reciprocal influence of humans and nature, of capitalist civilisation, and the constant destruction of our living environment. The centrepiece of the solo exhibition on view from 13 May to 8 October is a wall-filling, site-specific work, with which Fürhofer enters into a dialogue with architectural and artistic elements of the space. Is it painting, or is it sculpture? No other artistic medium transcends the boundaries of our vision like a relief. This ambiguity has always made reliefs appealing to the most famous artists. With Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso, from 24 May to 17 September, the Städel Museum presents a major survey exhibition on the possibilities explored in relief. On display are literally outstanding works, spanning some 150 years, by artists that include Bertel Thorvaldsen, Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Alexander Archipenko, as well as Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Yves Klein, Louise Nevelson, and Lee Bontecou. In the summer of 2023, the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone will transform the prominent hill of the Städel Garden into a strange landscape. In his group of works Sunrise. East, Rondinone assigns a head with characteristic, highly reduced facial features to each month in the calendar. Larger than life and cast in shiny silver aluminium, the massive sculptural heads are reduced to their facial expressions. They trigger the most diverse associations, suggesting ritual masks and ghosts, as well as the visual language of comics, emoticons, and memes. Intimate, predominantly small-format paintings seemingly lost in time characterise the work of Romanian artist Victor Man. Subtle influences of the pre-Renaissance period and echoes of Symbolism can be discerned in his melancholic imagery. Set amidst the Städel Museum’s Old Masters Collection, self-portraits and portraits by the artist will be on view from 14 October 2023 to 4 February 2024. Along with Albrecht Dürer, the painters Hans Holbein the Elder and Hans Burgkmair the Elder are regarded as pioneers of a new art: Renaissance painting. The centre of this art was the imperial and commercial metropolis of Augsburg, which developed into the capital of both the German and international Renaissance in just a few decades. The Städel Museum is dedicating a major special exhibition to this art historical turning point from 2 November 2023 to 18 February 2024. Renaissance: The Northern Side brings together in one exhibition for the first time a significant number of the most important paintings, drawings, and prints by Hans Holbein the Elder and Hans Burgkmair the Elder. Works by other Augsburg-based artists from the period, dating from 1480/90 to around 1530, as well as selected German, Italian, and Dutch artworks by Albrecht Dürer, Andrea Solario, and Hugo van der Goes, among others, will augment the selection. These works were created either for municipal clients or had an exemplary influence on the work of Holbein and Burgkmair. The Romanian-German artist Miron Schmückle is a very unique protagonist of contemporary art. Growing up in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu, as a child, the artist had dreamed of other worlds which seemed forever inaccessible due to the Iron Curtain. His early engagement with art history on the one hand and flora and fauna of distant countries on the other resulted in a uniquely coherent artistic oeuvre. The Städel Museum will present his unique pictorial cosmos beginning in November 2023. Städel Museum Phone +49(0)69-605098-170 |
