Bucerius Kunstforum Hamburg | DE
27.01.2018 – 21.05.2018
This exhibition is the first to explore Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s fascination with non-European art and art objects and his experience of their mystical force.
While active in the Brücke artist group, Schmidt-Rottluff aimed to ‘create what I see and feel, using the purest means of expression’. In the 1920s, he created many variations on his expressive style. His later landscapes and still lifes are characterized by a magical, melancholy rapture, dramatic atmosphere, and an intimate dialogue with silent objects. In monumental final works, the force of his storms of colour returns. His enthusiasm for non-European art and art objects is a uniting theme that runs through his artistic work. Again and again, he depicted African and Oceanic masks and sculptures in his artworks and adapted their unique, magical powers of expression in his art.
The exhibition Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The Magic of Things includes sculptures, paintings, watercolours, drawings, and prints, placing them in dialogue with objects from African and Oceanic Art taken from the artist’s estate.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976): Geweihfarn in der Mitte, 1957, Brücke-Museum Berlin, Karl und Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Stiftung, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
Link to the exhibition: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The Magic of Things.
