NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA.- Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Auguste Renoir, Alexej von Jawlensky, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Max Liebermann, Chaïm Soutine (to whom the Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf is currently devoting a major solo exhibition), Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Henry van de Velde*: These and other outstanding representatives of the avant-garde movements in art are now being presented by the Osthaus Museum until January 07, 2024 in the exhibition "European Avant-Garde - Vision and Reality".

On view are more than 80 works - 60 paintings, five sculptures, and a body of works on paper - by French, Belgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Austrian, and German artists from the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Parallel to this, a second exhibition entitled "David and Vladimir Burliuk - Masters of Experiments" is showing more than 40 works by the Burliuk brothers, who are highly significant for Ukrainian art history. The picture show with works from the years 1909 to 1949 is the first overview exhibition of the brothers in Germany.

In this way, Hagen in Westphalia recalls the great tradition of the Folkwang Museum. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, artists of the European avant-garde found a fixed point in the city on the edge of the Ruhr region. In 1902, the Folkwang Museum, today's Osthaus Museum, opened there as the world's first museum for contemporary art. Art patron and museum founder Karl Ernst Osthaus, who had amassed an extensive collection of paintings and sculptures by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Éduard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Auguste Renoir, Kees van Dongen and others, came a great deal closer to his vision of making "beauty once again the ruling power in life" with the founding of the museum.

Tayfun Belgin, director of the Museum Osthaus, emphasizes: "We have taken up the Folkwang impulse here, because we remember: Karl Ernst Osthaus exhibited the then completely unknown Brücke artists as early as 1907. Next year, the private collector Osthaus would have turned one hundred and fifty. This exhibition is a tribute to our museum founder. It is for his sake that we have realized this major exhibition at great expense."

With the double exhibition, the Osthaus Museum not only provides a Western view of the European avant-garde, but also shows the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century as a pan-European phenomenon.

The art of the avant-garde - the dawn of a new age

The beginning of the twentieth century is characterized by profound social upheavals. A new generation of artists tries to take this into account by overcoming the prevailing taste with a new aesthetic.

The artistic avant-garde is regarded as the vanguard of a new movement, which finds expression in various forms such as Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism. The claim: not only to bring about a radical innovation of artistic forms and the individual arts, but at the same time to assert a completely new conception of art and a new positioning of art in society.

The Hagen exhibition brings together the different positions of these artists and pays homage to their history of influence. For example, the Expressionists have influenced later generations-all the way to the wild painting of the 1970s and 1980s-Suprematism has found a renaissance in U.S. art on a grand scale.

The period of the avant-gardes remains an important chapter in the history of modern art, and continues to radiate into the art world and beyond.

David and Vladimir Burliuk

The brothers David Burliuk, born in 1882 in the Kharkiv governorate, and Vladimir Burliuk, born in 1886 also there, are of great importance for Ukrainian art history. Both were avant-garde artists, who were not only interested in innovations, but also enforced them. Vladimir, who died in World War I at the age of 32, is known as a neo-primitivist and cubo-futurist, while David is considered the father of Russian futurism. From 1922 David Burliuk lived in the United States, where he exerted great influence on the American art scene. He died on Long Island in 1967.

The two exhibitions are made possible by the generous support of private lenders: two collectors from London and a collector from Monaco who wish to maintain their anonymity, and the collector couple Maya and Anatoly Bekkerman from New York. 21 works, including works by the Burliuk brothers, are in the collection of Museum Osthaus. Both exhibitions are curated by Joseph Kiblitsky and Tayfun Belgin.

Osthaus Museum

The Folkwang Museum opened its doors in the Westphalian industrial city of Hagen in the summer of 1902. It owed its foundation to an art-minded, wealthy man: Karl Ernst Osthaus. The Folkwang soon achieved fame as the world's first museum for contemporary art. Dr. Tayfun Belgin, Director Osthaus Museum Hagen: "The Osthaus Museum exists to demonstrate, through its very special history as well as its exhibition practices today, that passionate engagement with art and culture brings joy, creates quality of life, and brings people together. Our museum offers dynamic experiences that illuminate the power and enduring significance of art in today's global society."

The museum sets out to interest and excite people in South Westphalia, the Ruhr region, and throughout Germany about the Osthaus Museum, its important collection of modern and contemporary art, and its special exhibitions. Therefore, the Osthaus Museum offers a high quality of stay and conveys an awareness of art and the constitutive role of the viewer in an entertaining and lively way.

Exhibited artists:

Alexander Archipenko, Walter Bötticher, David Burliuk, Vladimir Burliuk, Marc Chagall, André Derain, Robert Delaunay, Sonja Delaunay, Raul Dufy, Alexandra Exter, Robert Falk, Natalia Goncharova, Arshile Gorky, Boris Grigoriev, Armand Guillemin, Erich Heckel, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Piotr Konchalovsky, Konstantin Korovin, Mickail Larionov, Max Liebermann, Maximilian Luce, Aristide Maillol, Kasimir Malevich, Franz Marc, Albert Marquet, Gabriele Münter, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Ivan Puni, Christian Rohlfs, Auguste Renoir, Chaim Soutine, Henry van der Velde, Marie Vassilieff, Maurice de Vlaminck, Marianne von Werefkin

Osthaus Museum: World Class Artists in Hagen
European Avant-Garde - Vision and Reality
David and Vladimir Burliuk - Masters of Experiments
September 29th, 2023 to January 07th, 2024