ART-PREVIEW:Art from a Hundred Years

The Daimler Art Collection came into being in 1977. Since then, the Collection has expanded to include 2,000 works by roughly 700 national and international artists. The works were initially on display exclusively within the company, but in 1999 they acquired a new 600 square-metre exhibition space in the renovated Haus Huth at Potsdamer Platz. A series of thematically structured exhibitions focusing on the collection as well as on new acquisitions are shown four times a year.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Daimler Art Collection Archive

The multifaceted presentation “Art from a Hundred Years-Highlights of the Daimler Art Collection 1920-2020” of the Daimler Art Collection concentrates on Highlights from the Collection with around 100 works spanning nearly 10 decades, from Adolf Hölzel, Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer, characteristic figures of South German art, through to young international artists like Cao Fei, Clément Cogitore and Farid Alia; from classical Modernism through to international contemporary art; from painting and drawing via photography to Installation and Video Art. The group of Classical Modern works in the Daimler Art Collection consists primarily of paintings, but also contains sculptures, wall objects and graphics. They present an image of the development of art up until the 1960s, relating mainly to South-West Germany (the Stuttgart avant-garde—from Hölzel to Bauhaus—the ‘concrete’ artists: the Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung, the Zurich Concrete Artists, links with ‘De Stijl’). Four works in the Collection illustrate the important stages of Josef Albers’s development during his American period. Max Bill is another key artist in the Daimler Art Collection. Informel tendencies are well represented in the Daimler Art Collection by names like Bernd Berner, Peter Brüning, Karl Fred Dahmen, Gerhard Hoehme, Horst Kuhnert, Uwe Lausen, Georg Meistermann, Fred Thieler and Fritz Winter. The further gestural developments of the abstract school can be seen in the work of the Stuttgart painters Rudolf Schoof and K.R.H. Sonderborg. The Collection also contains its antithesis, the figurative counter-movement to Informel as represented by Stuttgart artists Leonhard Schmidt and Manfred Pahl. The Stuttgart avant-garde group of young artists came together in the early 1960s, having emerged from the Informel scene. They developed a type of large-format color-field painting that represented an object lesson in breaking open the traditional picture format. At the same time, they endeavored to connect with architecture and town planning.  “Zero” and “New Tendencies) (European movements connected to international minimalism) are represent”d in the Daimler Art Collection by names such as Enrico Castellani, Getulio Alviani, Gerhard von Graevenitz, Dadamaino, Jan Henderikse, Heinz Mack, Almir Mavignier, François Morellet, Jan Schoonhoven and Klaus Staudt. Isolated German figures within this spectrum – figures connected with various movements but who also set themselves apart from them – include Rupprecht Geiger, Günter Fruhtrunk and Hermann de Vries. The major abstract movements of the 1950s – 1970s era are characterized by a return to the basics of concrete, constructive and minimalist art, although this took different forms in Europe and America. Connections between European structural- constructive painting and American tendencies (Minimal Art, Color Field Painting, Hard Edge, Op Art) can plainly be seen in the Collection, British minimalist representatives from the 1960s have been added since 2003 –  artists like Jeremy Moon, Robin Denny and Michael Kidner. Their artwork represents the intellectual bedrock for ‘younger’ art philosophies also present in the Collection. the Daimler Art Collection contains prestigious high-caliber works by figures connected with major artistic movements and groupings within the 20th century’s abstract movements. The aim in the field of contemporary art is on the one hand to make it possible to look at one focal point of the Collection—the reduced, constructive-concrete and minimalist directions in contemporary art—and to show how it operated in distinct areas and continues to make an impact in the present. On the other hand, works by the younger generation demonstrate key movements in painting in the 1980s and 1990s. The latter group includes work by the generation of artists born around 1945/1950 – Ulrich Erben, Alfons Lachauer, Christa Näher, Günter Scharein, Artur Stoll, Ford Beckmann, Dieter Villinger, Sean Scully and Yuko Shiraishi. Between 2000 and 2010, exemplary artworks and artwork groups by artists from Australia (including John Nixon, Gail Hastings and Ian Burn) and from Asia, South Africa, India and the USA joined the collection.

Participating Artists: Mustafah Abdulaziz, Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Horst Bartnig, Guillaume Bijl, Dieter Blum, Cao Fei, Enrico Castellani, Clément Cogitore, Hanne Darboven, Philippe Decrauzat, Deng Dafei, Ding Yi, Alia Farid, Adolf Fleischmann, Pamela Fraser, Maria Freire, Günter Fruhtrunk, Rupprecht Geiger, Michelle Grabner, José Heerkens, Jan Henderikse, Gregor Hildebrandt, Bethan Huws, Iman Issa, Thomas Locher, Verena Loewensberg, Patricia London Ante Paris, Robert Longo John McLaughlin, Rune Mields, Sarah Morris, Gudrun Piper, Charlotte Posenenske, Silke Radenhausen, Eva-Maria Reiner, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Peter Roehr, Ugo Rondinone, Oskar Schlemmer, Natalia Stachon, Katja Strunz, Elaine Sturtevant, Anita Stöhr Weber, Beate Terfloth, Guy Tillim, John Tremblay, Utopia Group, Georges Vantongerloo, Xavier Veilhan, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Simone Westerwinter, Ben Willikens, Yang Fudong

Info: Curator: Renate Wiehager, Daimler AG, Corporate Art Department, Epplestraße 225, Stuttgart-Möhringen, Duration: 9/2-25/4/20, Days & Hours: the visit of the exhibition is only possible with a pre-registration: monika.daubner@daimler.com, https://art.daimler.com