1. April 2023 – 24. September 2023
Form and colour describe nothing other than what they themselves are - this fundamental insight of the early 20th century opened up a whole new fi eld of free design and visual experimentation for artists. This is evident in many of the works in the collection of the Von der Heydt-Museum.
The cosmos of the painter Franziska Holstein (*1978 in Leipzig) is also reduced and based on the variation of basic geometric forms and a colour scale defined for each series of paintings. What distinguishes her from the Constructive and Concrete Art however is her processual work: She develops her tableaux by laying one layer of paint on top of the other, creating pictorial surfaces that are as strict as they are dynamic and lively.
In the spirit of the exhibition series "Friendship Request" - a series of exhibitions at the Von der Heydt Museum that began in 2022 - Franziska Holstein, guided by the criteria "sharp-edged, two-dimensional, concrete", has selected major works from the museum collection together with curator Beate Eickhoff. Three rooms conceived by Holstein, in which she shows her most recent works, now enter into a dialogue with three rooms curated by the museum staff.
Among others, paintings by Otto Freundlich, Josef Albers, Victor Vasarely, Max Bill, Aurélie Nemours, Verena Loewensberg, Günter Fruhtrunk, Leon Polk Smith and Ellsworth Kelly prove to be exciting points of reference. Franziska Holstein contrasts them with a stringent concept developed from her own artistic approach, which is also about system, variation and combination. Particular highlights are large-scale wall paintings that are specially realised on site. She installs extensive silkscreen series, in which she explores formal variations and compositional systems, as wall-fi lling collages.
With the second “Friendship Request”, the Von der Heydt Museum continues an exhibition series in which renowned contemporary artists are invited to engage with the museum's rich holdings.
Funded by:
Funded by: