“We sat in his garden under the arbour by the Rhine and squinted into the bright summer sun. There was Macke, Max Ernst and the delicate, hunchbacked Seehaus, as well as the slender, infinitely talented Franz Henseler, who had been sent here from Munich. Occasionally, Heinrich Nauen would show up, and Franz Marc would mount his blue steed to paint the monkey frieze in the studio. In between, the tubular, writhing Haru Engert would wander around, sit with his legs tucked under him, and cut silhouettes. From our conversations about Europe —we considered Cologne and Bonn to be suburbs of Paris, Vienna, and Rome – Macke formed the idea of a representative exhibition of Rhenish Expressionists, which came about without any preparation or outside help.”
Karl Otten, 1912

Art is always closely linked to the lives of artists, their families and art collectors. The new collection presentation in the area of classical modernism traces these paths and stories. While the presentation of selected work provenances makes historical developments and their concrete effects on individual people and their lives comprehensible, exemplary biographies create a lively and multi-faceted picture of the period in which the artworks on display were created.

In addition to popular collection highlights by the well-known Rhenish Expressionists, the new presentation shows rarely exhibited works by Marta Worringer, Käthe Kollwitz, Olga Oppenheimer and others.

The exhibition also examines how we view artists’ biographies today that are marked by ruptures, ambivalence, or political entanglements. The examples of Werner Peiner and others reveal how confronting problematic life stories and attitudes changes our view of the works and brings the question of museum responsibility to the fore.

Artists represented:
Ernst Moritz Engert, Max Ernst, Franz Seraph Henseler, Franz M. Jansen, Alexej von Jawlensky, Käthe Kollwitz, Fifi Kreutzer, August Macke, Helmuth Macke, Carlo Mense, Heinrich Nauen, Marie Nauen-Malachowski, Gabriele Münter, Emil Nolde, Meret Oppenheim, Olga Oppenheimer, Werner Peiner, Lotte B. Prechner, Emy Roeder, Paul Adolf Seehaus, Hans Thuar, Marta Worringer.