DUSSELDORF.- Due to a generous donation by Willi Kemp, the Collection receives about 1000 prints in 2013, which Ingrid and Willi Kemp have gathered in nearly 60 years.

A first insight into this great and diverse collection is provided by a selection focused on the subject of colour. All sheets, abstract or figurative, are connected through their intense colours. Most of the works were created in the 1950s and 1960s and they seem to want to banish the tristesse of the postwar period with the use of bright colour hues and clear shapes. These fresh and lively colours, spread optimism and an atmosphere of departure.

Chronologically, the exhibition starts in the year 1949 with a colour lithograph by Werner Heldt depicting a row of houses in in Berlin. Figurative works of Fernand Leger, Valerio Adami und Martial Raysse are presented as well as abstract works by Josef Albers, Winfred Gaul, Rupprecht Geiger and Ellsworth Kelly. Furthermore, a number series by Robert Indiana and pictorial colour fields by Ulrich Erben are shown in the exhibition.

The art collector Willi Kemp (*1927) has donated his extensive collection of contemporary art, which he assembled over decades, already in 2001 to Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. The Kemp collection ranks among the most outstanding and extensive German private collections of art after 1950. Apart from figurative painting, ZERO art, sculptures and preparatory drawings, high-calibre works of Art Informel and Colour Field Painting form the core of the collection built up by Willi Kemp and his deceased wife Ingrid. Now the Museum Kunstpalast receives about 1000 prints from his collection.