Hommage à la France @ Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch - Works from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection

Hommage à la France 

Works from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection 

Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch 

5 May - 15 September 2024 

JEAN GORIN 

Composition spatio-temporelle multivisuelle n° 63, 1971

© Jean Gorin, Image: Gerhard Sauer

HUGO DEMARCO 

Lumière, 1979

© Hugo Demarco, Image: Gerhard Sauer

It is not surprising that the manifesto of concrete art was published in of all places Paris in 1930. At that time the city was the capital not only of France but also of international abstraction. "Concrete painting, not abstract, because nothing is more concrete, nothing more real than a line, a colour, a surface", was how Theo van Doesburg defined the still fledgling art movement in the magazine Art concret. Even after 1945, the metropolis of Paris continued to emanate a radiance that drew any number of artists from home and abroad to the Seine. Here it was possible to build on the ideas of the pre-war period, while at the same time a new generation grew up that rejected intuition and personal expression in art and instead pursued an objective, scientific line.

The exhibition Hommage à la France is dedicated to the various approaches to concrete art in France as reflected in the Marli Hoppe-Ritter collection. The selection of works, which spans almost an entire century, clearly evinces the lively exchange of ideas within the closely-knit artists' community. The main thrust of the show is directed to paintings, which are flanked by reliefs, objects, lumino-kinetic works and installations. The greater part of the exhibits were created in the three decades after 1945, which in many ways reflects the enormous cultural upswing during that era.

In addition to a large number of brightly coloured paintings from Auguste Herbin to Leo Breuer, the exhibition presents a variety of pictorial objects whose colours, forms and structures are transformed in a dialogue with the viewer's movements. At the same time, in Victor Vasarely’s works one can experience how the father of Op Art used simple elements to set the picture surface in apparent vibration. The works of the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV) are also characterised by systematic thinking married with the spirit of research. François Morellet, for instance, used a random generator to create a picture with a shimmering effect. Finally, another section of the exhibition illustrates how the radical reduction of colour and form à la De Stijl and Bauhaus still inspires new avenues of design today.

With works by Yaacov Agam, Martha Boto, Leo Breuer, Daniel Buren, Geneviève Claisse, Sonia Delaunay, Hugo Demarco, Jean Gorin, René Guiffrey, Auguste Herbin, Gottfried Honegger, Jean Leppien, Vera Molnar, François Morellet, Aurélie Nemours, Francisco Sobrino, Jesús Rafael Soto, Gregorio Vardanega, Victor Vasarely, among others.

MUSEUM RITTER

Sammlung Marli Hoppe-Ritter

Alfred Ritter Strasse 27, 71111 Waldenbuch

www.museum-ritter.de 

Colours in a Square @ Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch - Works from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection

Colours in a Square

Works from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection 

Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch 

14 May - 17 September 2023 

This exhibition focuses on the topic of colour and the associated ways in which colours and elementary forms interact. On display are around 60 geometric abstract paintings, visual objects, and sculptures from the 1960s to the present day. They have been made by artists from 10 different European countries.

With works by Yaacov Agam, Kirstin Arndt, Werner Bauer, Max Bill, Bob Bonies, Hellmut Bruch, Geneviève Claisse, Daniel de Spirt, Rita Ernst, Hans Jörg Glattfelder, Ingo Glass, Camille Graeser, Gottfried Honegger, Imi Knoebel, Matti Kujasalo, Jim Lambie, Camill Leberer, Thomas Lenk, Richard Paul Lohse, Dóra Maurer, Vera Molnar, François Morellet, Aurélie Nemours, Miriam Prantl, Nelly Rudin, Diet Sayler, Reiner Seliger, Anton Stankowski, Klaus Staudt, Günther Uecker, Grazia Varisco, Peter Weber, Martin Willing, Shizuko Yoshikawa, Beat Zoderer.

Colour is one of the foremost means of artistic expression. And as is clearly demonstrated by the works presented here from the collection, this is especially true of non-representational art, in which colour is usually free of any symbolic value and stands entirely for itself.

But does the colour concept behind constructive-concrete works strictly obey its own intrinsic logic, as might be expected from art of this kind? Or are colours also sometimes employed in the broad field of geometric abstraction in a spontaneous, intuitive manner that ignores predefined rules?

The exhibition shows that both are possible. In addition to works in which colours and forms interact on a rational basis, others are on view that playfully break with the strict ideals of concrete systems of order, and that combine a grammar of geometric forms with idiosyncratic colour experiments. Some paintings above all impress the beholder by strong colour contrasts that create a visual sense of vibration in the picture surface. Others are radically monochrome - without any hint of monotony. And last but not least, the exhibits also include works made in part from glass or acrylic glass, which first unfold the true radiance of their colours in and through the ambient light.

A variant of the exhibition Colours in a Square has been on view at the Fondazione Marcello Morandini in Varese (IT) until 16 April 2023.

MUSEUM RITTER

Sammlung Marli Hoppe-Ritter

Alfred Ritter Strasse 27, 71111 Waldenbuch

www.museum-ritter.de