Sammlung Zander – Archive

LICKED BY THE WAVES

New bathers in art

06.07. – 06.10.24

Camille Bombois, Surprises, undated, oil on canvas, 61 x 81 cm

For centuries, mythological and Biblical stories provided an exquisite, artistic pretext for depicting nude bathing women in art. But pioneering modern and contemporary artists have given bathers – both female and male – a completely new role in their work. Their fascination for this classical subject is expressed in splendid pleasure, nostalgia, and sometimes refreshing irony. This exhibition presents dozens of groundbreaking paintings and sculptures by no less than 65 leading international artists. Their portrayals offer a captivating exploration of beauty, sexuality, appropriation, and the male – or female – gaze. Discover the new bathers in the work of artists ranging from Marlene Dumas to Niki de Saint Phalle and from Camille Bombois to Amoako Boafo. – Museum MORE, Gorssel.

The exhibition is curated by Maite van Dijk and Tanja Ritterbex. A catalogue with contributions from Dr Simon Kelly (Head of Modern Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum), Prof. Maaike Meijer (Professor of Gender Studies), Prof. Rosemarie Buikema (Professor of Art, Culture and Diversity) and Tanja Ritterbex (artist and guest curator of the exhibition) will accompany the exhibition. From the Zander Collection Camille Bombois painting Surprises (undated) can be seen in the exhibition.

Museum MORE

Hoofdstraat 28

7213 CW Gorssel

Netherlands

>> further information

FRIEDRICH SCHRÖDER-SONNENSTERN

The three-time Moon World Champion

09.06. – 08.09.24

Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, The Duplicate of Fate or The Lifelong Runnner, 1956, colored pencil on paper, 50 x 71 cm

“Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern (1892-1982) has repeatedly received great recognition for his unique formal language and his imaginative pictorial stories. Nevertheless, he has remained an outsider to this day, whose work cannot be categorized according to established art-historical categories. To this day, it is labeled ‘outsider art’. As the unconventional loner had several stays in psychiatric wards, his oeuvre was even classified as ‘art of the mentally ill’ for a long time.
Against the backdrop of the current discussion about ‘insiders and outsiders’ in modern and contemporary art, the exhibition aims to stimulate a new examination of Schröder-Sonnenstern’s pictorial world. It shows around 50 works from a private collection in Berlin, which are being presented to the public for the first time – supplemented by seven works from the Zander Collection in Cologne.”

Mönchehaus Museum Goslar

Mönchestraße 1

38640 Goslar

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EXHIBITION 02

23.05. – 31.07.24

Matija Skurjeni, Study of the effect of the atomic bomb, 1965, oil on canvas (detail)

Matija Skurjeni

Matija Skurjeni is born in Veternica, a village in Croatia, in 1898. He takes a job with the railways at a young age; with interruptions, he will work there until his retirement. He starts making art in the early 1920s. In 1945, he and other workers and clerks of the railway company meet in Zagreb to found their own art and culture club, Vinko Jeđut.

Skurjeni attends the evening painting classes offered by the club, whose formal structure and contents resemble those of the instruction at art academies, and immerses himself in the technical and aesthetic foundations of his métier. His early works accordingly reflect the influence of academic and socialist realism, then the dominant styles in Yugoslavia. Having retired in 1956, he dedicates himself entirely to his painting. Over the next twenty years, he creates an imposing and distinctive oeuvre that resists the influences of both socialist aesthetics and the art dominant in the U.S. and Western Europe, while grappling with the questions they raise.

His compositions present views of a phantasmagoric reality that transcends the purely physical world. Surreal landscapes — mountains, forests, bodies of water, architectonic structures — form the settings in which Skurjeni shows humans, animals, and mythical creatures in interaction. His works address events in politics, society, and culture; he references personal experiences and works through his dream visions.

His engagement with the imaginary and subconscious evinces parallels with the ideas of the Surrealists. Like the Surrealists, Skurjeni does not acknowledge an objectively given external reality. What matters instead is the oneiric, absurd, and fantastic. The artist makes a careful study of the avant-garde and the Surrealists in Paris. Starting in 1959, the Croatian writer Radovan Ivšić, who lives in Paris, brings Skurjeni in contact with André Breton and artists and intellectuals like Toyen, José Pierre, Mimi Parent, and Jean Benoît. Breton, who greatly admires Skurjeni, publishes reproductions of his works in the journals Phases and La Brèche. In 1962, Ivšić organizes an exhibition at Galerie Mona Lisa, Paris, that presents an overview of Skurjeni’s oeuvre. Breton comes to see the show and calls the works “enchanted.” One of the paintings on display, Hula Hop (1959), enters his personal collection.

In 1963, Skurjeni paints the picture First Manifesto for André Breton. Reprising Max Ernst’s painting Au rendez-vous des amis (1922), it shows the Surrealist circle two years before publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism, illustrating how important the engagement with these artists and pioneering thinkers is for Skurjeni. In 1970, his The Acrobats (1961) appears side by side with works by artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, and Man Ray in the exhibition Surrealism? at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and three other venues in Sweden. The show gathers works by international artists who find inspiration in Surrealist thought.

Critics always also associate Skurjeni’s works with naïve art. His pictures are included in major group exhibitions surveying the creations of self-taught artists such as Die Kunst der Naiven, curated by Oto Bihalji-Merin, which is shown at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1974–75.

Charlotte Zander is introduced to Matija Skurjeni in the early 1960s and buys a first set of works by him. Over the years, she acquires additional paintings for her collection. Several pictures and drawings attest to the friendship between the collector and the artist, who records encounters and visits in works like Ms. Zander and Skurjeni in Heidelberg (1967), Skurjeni Travels to Heidelberg (1965), and My Experience, Weißbach, Odenwald (1965). In 1998, Charlotte Zander mounts a solo exhibition of his work at her museum at Schloss Bönnigheim and edits a comprehensive monograph. Vladimir Crnković contributes an essay in which he sums up: “… regardless of how and with what we may explain the alchemy of the imagination, whether we decide to categorize this painter as a naïve artist or a Surrealist (or both)—what is essential is that Matija Skurjeni is a great artist.“

An illness forces Skurjeni to give up painting in 1975. In 1984, he gives some of his works to the town of Zaprešić near Zagreb; they are now on view at the Matija Skurjeni Museum. Matija Skurjeni dies in Zaprešić on October 4, 1990. A substantial part of Skurjeni’s oeuvre is held by the Zander Collection.

Sammlung Zander gGmbH

Jülicher Str. 24a

50674 Cologne

Opening hours

Friday 2 – 6 pm

Saturday 11 am – 2 pm

and by appointment

The exhibition is extended until April 24, 2024

EXHIBITION 01

25.11.23 – 2.3.24

Camille Bombois,Les trois baigneuses, undated, oil on canvas (detail)

André Bauchant | Camille Bombois | Séraphine Louis | Henri Rousseau | Louis Vivin

Works by renowned as well as obscure or forgotten artists are regulary shown in solo or group exhibitions in the new office and exhibition space to provide an insight into the collection. The inaugural exhibition will showcase paintings by the French classics André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau and Louis Vivin.

Charlotte Zander cherished their oeuvres and assembled major bodies of their works that in some instances are of unrivaled art-historical significance. The works of these five artists constitute the core of her collection and provided her with guidance in her decisions concerning other artists she began collecting.

In addition to our exhibition programming, we will delve into questions of what it means to be an artist amid changing economic and political processes, the places of artists and works in art history and society and the politics of collection-building. We want to probe these issues in a variety of formats, always taking the collection as point of departure. Addressing these concerns, which are of broader relevance and have not been explored in sufficient depth, is an integral part of working with the collection. The aim is also to draw the interest of scholars representing a range of disciplines.

As in the past, we will collaborate with museums and curators in Germany and abroad. A sizable group of works from the Zander Collection is currently on view in the exhibition Which Modernism? Insiders and Outsiders of the Avant-garde at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.

André Bauchant (1873 – 1958) starts painting at the age of forty-six; his work is shown in the Paris Salon d’automne on a regular basis beginning in 1921. In 1922, he attracts the attention of Le Corbusier, who writes about him in his magazine L’Esprit nouveau. In 1928, Bauchant designs a stage setting for Sergei Diaghilev’s production of Stravinsky’s ballet Apollon musagète. That same year, the art dealer Wilhelm Uhde includes his works in the exhibition Les Peintres du cœur sacré. In 1937, Bauchant participates in the exhibition Les Maîtres populaires de la réalité, which is shown in Paris and then travels to Zurich, London, and New York. Charlotte Zander mounts a comprehensive retrospective of his oeuvre in 2001. Bauchant’s works are held by collections including those of the Kunsthaus Zürich; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Tate, London.

Camille Bombois (1883 – 1970) shows his pictures in Paris’s Montmartre in the 1920s when the art dealer Wilhelm Uhde became aware of him and included his paintings in the 1928 exhibition Les Peintres du cœur sacré. This was followed by the participation in Les Maîtres populaires de la réalité in Paris, Zurich, London, and New York. In 1955, several of his works are on view at documenta in Kassel. Charlotte Zander mounts solo exhibitions of his art on a regular basis between 1984 and 1999. Works by Bombois are held by collections including those of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art; New York; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Séraphine Louis (1864 – 1942) first participates in an exhibition in her hometown of Senlis in 1927; the following year, her paintings are shown in Wilhelm Uhde’s exhibition Les Peintres du cœur sacré in Paris. Her works are featured at the 1a Bienal de São Paulo in 1951 and at documenta in Kassel four years later. Three years after her death, Galerie France, Paris, mounts her first solo exhibition, followed by solo presentations in Senlis, Zurich, and Düsseldorf. In 2008, the director Martin Provost makes the biographical film Séraphine, which wins seven Césars in 2009. Collections that hold works by Louis include the Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, Senlis; the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

Henri Rousseau (1844 – 1910) starts painting in 1885, and his pictures are exhibited in the Salon des Artistes Indépendants the following year. The art dealer Wilhelm Uhde mounts a solo exhibition of Rousseau’s art at his Paris gallery in 1908 and publishes a monograph in 1921. Rousseau’s oeuvre gains institutional recognition after his death, and his works are included in seminal exhibitions of the twentieth century such as Der Blaue Reiter (1911) in Munich; Les Maîtres populaires de la réalité (1937) in Paris, Zurich, London, and New York; and documenta (1955) in Kassel. At the 1950 Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, an entire room is dedicated to his work, which is also showcased in solo exhibitions all over the world, including at the Arts Club of Chicago (1931); Kunsthalle Basel (1933); the Art Institute of Chicago (1942); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1985); Tate Modern, London (2005); Fondation Beyeler (2010); the Palazzo Ducale, Venice (2010); and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2016). Among the many museums that have works by Rousseau in their collections are the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Fondation Beyeler and Kunstmuseum Basel; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Louis Vivin (1861 – 1936) starts painting in 1904; he first exhibits his work in 1923, in Paris’s Montmartre, Wilhelm Uhde also sees his paintings there around 1925. Three years later, Vivin’s work is included in the exhibition Les Peintres du cœur sacré. His first exhibition, at Perls Galleries, New York, in 1932, is followed by group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthalle Basel; and the Haus der Kunst, Munich. After 1945, solo exhibitions are held at venues including the Arts Club of Chicago; Galerie Bing, Paris; and the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. Vivin’s art is also shown at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1951 and at documenta, Kassel, in 1955. Charlotte Zander shows his work in solo exhibitions in 1982 and 1989. In 1985, the Musée du Vieux-Château, Laval, mounts a comprehensive retrospective of his art titled Hommage à Louis Vivin. Vivin’s works are held by the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d’art modern de la Ville de Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and other museums.

Sammlung Zander gGmbH

Jülicher Str.24a

50674 Cologne

Opening hours

Friday 2 – 6 pm

Saturday 11 am – 2 pm

and by appointment

THE SKY IS THIN

Drawings

10.11.23 – 13.1.24

Madge Gill, untitled, undated, color ink on paper, 64 x 52 cm

THE SKY IS THIN. DRAWINGS

SELECTED BY ELENA BRUGNANO & TOBIAS PILS

STANDARD (OSLO)

10.11.2023-13.01.2024

—–

The sky is thin

Drawing a line.
Inhaling a square.
Hotel Central.
A cat on stairs.
1xLight.

Wearing a hat.
Exhaling Viennese Actionism.
Water fountains in the desert.
Bathers.
Anti drawings.

Out of love and dirt.
Questioning children’s eyes.
A crucifixion with cars passing by.
You ripe I eat you.

How fragile we are.

—–

The exhibition includes works from the Zander Collection by Rosie Camanga, Madge Gill, Bill Traylor and Agatha Wojciechowsky.

Standard (OSLO)

Waldemar Thranes Gate 86C

NO-0175, Oslo

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WHICH MODERNISM?

Insiders and Outsiders of the Avant-Garde

22.10.23 – 14.1.24

André Bauchant, Portrait d'André Bauchant par lui-même, 1938, oil on canvas, 197 x 190 cm

WHICH MODERNISM?

INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz

The exhibition is dedicated to two poles of modern art between the two world wars. The focus is on a re-evaluation of so-called naïve painting and avant-garde positions, such as Cubism, New Objectivity and Surrealism. A high-caliber selection of around 100 works tells the story of relationships, networks, and mutual influences between well-known protagonists of Classical Modernism and lesser-known autodidacts of naïve art. It enables a new reading and puts the canon of “in”- and “outsiders” up for discussion.

The center is the historical exhibition Les Maîtres populaires de la réalité. This took place in 1937 in the hall of the Revue de la Renaissance in Paris; in the shadow of the World’s Fair, which was dominated by strong ideological juxtapositions; Stalinist and Nazi megalomaniac architectures and sculptures. The show Les Maîtres populaires de la réalité featured works by Henri Rousseau, Séraphine Louis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois, among others. The artists never saw themselves as a unified group, but they were seen as a popular counter-movement to other styles, with whose representatives they were in close contact. The exhibition was later shown in modified form in Zurich, London, and later in New York. Afterwards it became quieter and most of the artists shown there were initially forgotten again.

The exhibition, based on an idea by Manja Wilkens, was created in close cooperation between the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz and the Sprengel Museum Hannover. Numerous works in the exhibition come from the collections of both museums. They are supplemented by exquisite national and international loans and, in particular, an extensive convolute from the Zander Collection.

A catalog accompanying the exhibition has been published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin.

Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz
Theaterplatz 1
09111 Chemnitz

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A LIFE IN PICTURES

A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner

29.7. – 14.8.23

Henri Rousseau, Le singe comme peintre, 1903-1910, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm

A LIFE IN PICTURES. A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner
at PalaisPopulaire, Berlin

The exhibition A Life in Pictures. A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner traces the various stages of the gallery owner’s life as reflected in art. Works from different periods of origin are juxtaposed to create exciting dialogues, enabling conclusions to be drawn about existential themes of humankind.

Since 1956, all aspects of Rudolf Zwirner’s life have been closely linked with art, the development of which he decisively shaped in the second half of the twentieth century up to the present day: professionally as a gallery owner, secretary general of documenta II, cofounder of the world’s first art fair, and curator, but also privately in intensive exchange with artists. Life in Pictures. A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner, shown on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, makes a plea that art as an essential part of the human condition. The more than fifty works in the exhibition, which come from museums, private collections, as well as the Deutsche Bank Collection, which owes important acquisitions to the Zwirner gallery, paint an artistic portrait of this impressive, multi-faceted man. At the same time, however, they stand for the constants, ruptures, and developments in art and the art trade since the postwar period, which Zwirner decisively influenced and shaped. Rudolf Zwirner was already associated with most of the artists represented in the show in the early stages of their careers and participated in their later successes.

Curated by Philipp Bollmann and Michael Müller

The exhibition includes works from the Zander Collection by Henri Rousseau and Matija Skurjeni.

PalaisPopulaire
Unter den Linden 5
10117 Berlin

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BIENNALE FOR FREIBURG 2

The Song of the Street

16.6. – 30.7.23

Nikifor Krynicki, Begging Letter, 1935, mixed media on paper, 25 x 28 cm

The street—like a living organ—is characterized by constant movement and change. It is witness to immediate reality and, at the same time, to the layers and deposits of historical events and socio-political power relations that inscribe themselves in its strata. In the past and the present alike, the street exists as a political symbol. Under the title “Das Lied der Straße,” the Biennale für Freiburg 2 reflects on the street as a space in which social debates and power relations are negotiated and brought into the public sphere. The street was and is a place where different attitudes and realities of life meet, and images of continuous, urban transformation are projected.

Opening: Friday, 16.6.23, 7 pm

Curated by Paula Kommoss

The Zander Collection is pleased to lend several works by Nikifor Krynicki for the exhibition.

Biennale für Freiburg

Dreisamstr. 21
79098 Freiburg im Breisgau

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BOOK RELEASE

Koenig Books, Cologne

9.6.23

Installation view at Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne. Photo: Johannes Post

Warm invite to the book release of

26 ARTISTS. WORKS FROM THE ZANDER COLLECTION

June 9 from 5 – 7 pm
at Buchhandlung Walther König, Ehrenstraße 4, 50672 Cologne

on occasion of the book release the shop window is curated by Susanne Zander

Charlotte Zander (1930–2014) was a devoted collector of works by artists without academic training. Presenting works, biographies and chronologies of exhibitions, the publication showcases a number of artists in the collection: André Bauchant, Erich Bödeker, Camille Bombois, Adolf Dietrich, Louis Ducasse, Emerik Feješ, Willem van Genk, Madge Gill, Margarethe Held, Morris Hirshfield, Paul Humphrey, Johann Korec, Augustin Lesage, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Sava Sekulić, Bill Traylor, Adalbert Trillhaase, Oswald Tschirtner, Mirko Virius, Louis Vivin, Alfred Wallis, Scottie Wilson, Adolf Wölfli and Carlo Zinelli.

The selection of works for the book is based on an exhibition at Schloss Bönnigheim in 2016–2017 curated by Susanne Pfeffer.

26 Artists. Works from the Zander Collection
Susanne Zander (Ed.), Texts by Susanne Pfeffer, Moritz Scheper
Language: German / English
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne 2023

Kindly supported by:
Stiftung Kunst, Kultur und Bildung der Kreissparkasse Ludwigsburg
ZILKENS FINE ART Insurance Broker GmbH

ZADIK | Zentralarchiv für deutsche und internationale Kunstmarktforschung

WHICH MODERNISM? INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hannover

6.5. – 17.9.23

Camille Bombois, untitled, 1935, oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm

The point of departure for the exhibition is LES MAITRES POPULAIRES DE LA RÉALITÉ, the first major overview of “naïve” painting, which was shown concurrently with the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris and subsequently in Zurich, London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In separate chapters, the present exhibition explores the interrelationships between six artists on show there with the exponents of the classical avant-gardes. The selection of works by Henri Rousseau, Camille Bombois and Séraphine Louis together with those by Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann and Marc Chagall, among others, permits a new reading of modern art.

The exhibition draws largely on works of the Zander Collection besides the collections of the Sprengel Museum Hannover and the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.

Curated by Reinhard Spieler and Manja Wilkens; Co-curator is Alexander Leinemann.

“Which Modernism? Insiders and ‘Outsiders of the Avant-Garde” is an exhibition of the Sprengel Museum Hannover (6.5. to 17.9.23) and the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (22.10.23 to 14.1.24).

Sprengel Museum Hannover

Kurt-Schwitters-Platz
30169 Hannover

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NEW BOOK

26 Artists. Works from the Zander Collection

book cover: André Bauchant, Portrait d'une jeune femme, 1946, oil on cardboard

26 ARTISTS. WORKS FROM THE ZANDER COLLECTION

Presenting works, biographies and chronologies of exhibitions, the publication showcases a number of artists in the Zander Collection that have recently drawn particular attention from the art world. In this way, it probes the question: Who is an artist—and who actually decides? Charlotte Zander (1930–2014) was a devoted collector of works by artists without academic training such as Margarethe Held, Morris Hirshfield, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau and Adolf Wölfli. The selection of works for the book is based on the new presentation of the collection at Schloss Bönnigheim in 2016–2017 curated by Susanne Pfeffer.

26 Artists. Works from the Zander Collection

Edited by Susanne Zander, texts by Susanne Pfeffer, Moritz Scheper

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne 2023

ISBN 978 3 7533 0381 9

NAIVE REALISM | From Rousseau to Grandma Moses

Museum MORE, Gorssel

25.3. – 25.6.23

Adolf Dietrich, Der Kartenspieler (Hermann Bosshart), oil on carton, 1926, 51 x 34 cm

Uninhibited, imaginative and touchingly uncomplicated. This appears to be the irresistible appeal of naive realism. But this seemingly straightforward surface conceals a rich artistic spectrum. And its unschooled makers were on the cusp of modern art. Museum MORE is uniting 80 paintings by renowned and less well-known naive realists from the United States and Europe. A unique transatlantic assembly of distinctive artworks and captivating life stories. Inspired by the pioneering exhibition Masters of Popular Painting at New York’s Museum of Modern Art 85 years ago, Museum MORE is reuniting works by many artists featured in the original exhibition. Naive Realism | From Rousseau to Grandma Moses features remarkable art by self-taught artists including Henri Rousseau, Camille Bombois, Séraphine Louis, Nikifor, Grandma Moses, John Kane, Horace Pippin and Morris Hirshfield.

The Zander Collection is pleased to lend several works by André Bauchant, Adolf Dietrich, Morris Hirshfield, John Kane, Aloys Sauter and Séraphine Louis to the exhibition.

Museum MORE

Hoofdstraat 28

7213 CW Gorssel

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GAME OF NO GAMES

Instructions for Walking in High Spirits

Symposium 11.2.23

Dietrich Orth, Anleitung zu beschwingtem, freudigen Gehen, 1987. Installationsansicht Kölnischer Kunstverein, 2022. Foto: Mareike Tocha.

Symposium

Games of No Games

Instructions for Walking in High Spirits

Reflections on the use of the term Outsider Art

Saturday, 11.2.23, 10:30 am – 4:30 pm, Kölnischer Kunstverein

with Lisa Arndt, Nikola Dietrich, Andreas Fischer, Amelie Gappa, Charlotte Laubard, Kito Nedo, Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck, Susanne Pfeffer, Falk Wolf and Susanne Zander

The symposium aims to explore the question of whether there is a need today for categorisations through terms such as Outsider Art. Is a definition possible at all, or is the term not rather arbitrary and oriented more towards social ideas of norms than towards the artistic work?

The symposium is part of the programme accompanying the exhibition Game of No Games at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, which presents historical and contemporary works by artists who have received little attention throughout art history. Their participation in society and the art world has been limited – as a result of conservatorships, disenfranchisement, or discrimination, to name a few.

Kölnischer Kunstverein, Hahnenstrasse 6, 50667 Köln

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THE PAINTERS OF THE SACRED HEART

Böttcherstrasse Museums, Bremen

3.12.22 – 12.3.23

Camille Bombois, Derrière le rideau, 1928, oil on canvas, 81 x 59 cm

André Bauchant | Camille Bombois | Séraphine Louis | Henri Rousseau | Louis Vivin

The Painters of the Sacred Heart is on view at Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen, from December 3, 2022 until March 12, 2023. Curated by Udo Kittelmann and organized with Dr. Henrike Hans.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, the Böttcherstraße Museums, Bremen and the Zander Collection.

Exhibition catalogue:
Die Maler des Heiligen Herzens I The Painters of the Sacred Heart
André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau, Louis Vivin
Texts by Udo Kittelmann, Frank Schmidt, Henrike Hans, Annabel Ruckdeschel
Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2022

GAME OF NO GAMES

Anleitung zu beschwingtem Gehen

13.11.22 – 5.3.23

William Scott, untitled, 2013, Acrylic on card, Courtesy The Museum of Everything

Curated by Nikola Dietrich and Susanne Zander

Opening: Saturday, 12.11.22, 7 pm

This exhibition presents historical and contemporary works by artists who have received little attention throughout art history. Their participation in society and the art world has been limited—as a result of conservatorships, disenfranchisement, or discrimination, to name a few. This is closely associated with the lack of stable institutional footholds or larger (art) networks and support systems. Conventional categorizations, such as Outsider Art or Art Brut, along with the concurrent emphasis on their alleged distinguishing characteristics—which have so far often been read as narratives on the spontaneous vs. planned, innate vs. learned, naïve vs. sophisticated, or even primitive vs. modern—are currently considered outdated and must be critically challenged. Accordingly, this exhibition intends to encourage a different understanding concerning established ways of thinking in the art world, as well as consolidate an approach to exhibiting and representing different artistic practices that is more readily assimilated.

Through their works, the artists on view at the Kölnischer Kunstverein immerse themselves in self-alienating role-playing games. They can thus take on different identities and undergo a kind of metamorphosis—to the point of becoming animals. “I’m a frigging hunter, but I know that it causes trouble… I have to mask it [what is troublesome] so that I can continue to exist in society at all,” the artist Rabe perplexum declared (in Experimente, Der unbekannte Künstler, 1987). In both her works and life, she adopted a raven persona.

Our aim is not to place the exhibited artists and their artistic practices in the margins of society, nor to portray them as artists that unveil repressed realities or develop suppressed longings behind their apparent detachment from the world. Rather, this exhibition explores how they deliberately work with their dependencies. Adelhyd van Bender, for instance, designed a large and complex body of work that breaks the world into mathematical formulas. Intertwining these with biographical details in associative chains, his practice builds a new order. As a model for his drawings, which were copied and revised several times, he often used letters addressed to him from official authorities, which testified to his constant struggle against the prolongation of his conservatorship.

These artists have often positioned themselves within society, precisely in the non-places of art and interstitial spaces where a larger public could be found, so as to relate to this community and criticize it with a matter-of-factness that is peculiar to each of them. By leaving behind social conventions, norms, and dominant traditions, as well as undermining social or gender performances, these artists have frequently been met with a lack of understanding. This was certainly the case for Helga Goetze, who broke away from a conventional way of life in the 1970s and later advocated free love, sex, and female pleasure almost daily in front of the Memorial Church in Berlin.

The radical potential of the works gathered here resides in the fact that they insist on unfulfilled socio-political promises and, as Dietrich Orth hints at in one of his works that gives the exhibition its title, provide instructions and suggestions for a better, fairer way of treating one another. They manifest a profound longing directed toward the future—something that can also be understood as a critique of the present.

MORRIS HIRSHFIELD REDISCOVERED

American Folk Art Museum, New York

23.9.22 – 29.1.23

Morris Hirshfield, Stage Girls with Angels, 1945, oil on canvas, 127 x 91,5 cm

The comprehensive retrospective Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered reassesses the art and reception of a unique painter who was posthumously overlooked. The exhibition features over 40 paintings by the self-taught artist, including iconic works such as Girl with Flowers, Stage Beauties, Parliamentary Buildings, and Inseparable Friends.

Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered was curated by Richard Meyer, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor of Art History at Stanford University. Susan Davidson served as curatorial advisor for the exhibition. Valérie Rousseau, the American Folk Art Museum’s (AFAM) senior curator of self-taught art and art brut, was the coordinating curator for the exhibition.

The exhibition features works by Morris Hirshfield from the Zander Collection, among others.

Accompanying the exhibition is the catalog:

Master of the Two Left Feet
Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered
Ed. by Richard Meyer
The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technlogy 2022

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THE PAINTERS OF THE SACRED HEART

Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

16.7. – 20.11.22

Camille Bombois, La Parade (Lila Ballett), undated, oil on canvas, 50 x 72.8 cm

André Bauchant | Camille Bombois | Séraphine Louis | Henri Rousseau | Louis Vivin

Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, presents The Painters of the Sacred Heart. The exhibition, curated by Udo Kittelmann, is on view from July 16 until November 20, 2022.

With the exception of Henri Rousseau, whose work found influential supporters early on, the complex oeuvres of the five artists in the exhibition are still largely unknown to wider audiences. Over the decades, they have been branded “naïfs,” identified as exponents of a nascent modern primitivism, and finally labeled “outsider artists.” The new exhibition now places their output in a different context, framing them as early critics of modernism.

Primarily based on selected works from the collection of Charlotte Zander, who unerringly pursued her personal vision, collecting art beyond the systematically organized canon, the exhibition presents the works of these outstanding and widely underappreciated artists, the “Painters of the Sacred Heart,” in unprecedented breadth.

The exhibition was organized in cooperation with Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen, where it will subsequently be on view from December 3, 2022, until March 12, 2023.

The following catalogue is released in conjunction with the exhibition:

Die Maler des Heiligen Herzens / The Painters of the Sacred Heart
André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau, Louis Vivin
Writings by Udo Kittelmann, Frank Schmidt, Henrike Hans, Annabel Ruckdeschel
Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2022

The Zander Collection Is Taking a New Direction

After 24 years of continuous exhibition work and presenting the collection in the historical rooms of Schloss Bönnigheim, the Zander Collection will be taking a new direction. Its goal will be to continue to ensure optimal, forward-looking conditions for providing art education, research, and exhibition opportunities for its artworks in the long-term.

Thanks to its roughly 4,500 works of Naïve, Outsider, and Folk Art, the Zander Collection has a unique focus. Charlotte Zander (1930–2014) assembled this collection over more than 60 years, and it features key groups of works by classic Naïve artists, such as André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Morris Hirshfield, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau, Adalbert Trillhaase, Louis Vivin, and Alfred Wallis. Since 1996, these works have been kept and presented at Schloss Bönnigheim, a castle located in Bönnigheim. During this period, 37 thematic and monographic exhibitions have been shown there.

After the collector Charlotte Zander died in 2014, the collection became a non-profit limited liability company (gGmbH). Since then, Susanne Zander, the founder’s daughter, has served as the chief executive officer of the organization. During this time, curators were invited to come and realize several exhibitions – for example, Susanne Pfeffer’s 27 Künstler. 209 Werke (27 Artists. 209 Works), and Veit Loers and Andreas Fischer’s Be Happy! We do not forget you. With a look back at the exhibitions organized by Charlotte Zander, Susanne Zander will curate the last exhibition to be held in Schloss Bönnigheim in April 2020, which will be on show until the end of May 2020, after which the collection will leave Bönnigheim.

The current rewriting of the art historical canon, which began at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and here in Germany at the Museum Folkwang in Essen and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin narrates art history from more diverse and global perspectives and is also a goal for the Zander Collection. The aim is therefore to support the new research, reevaluation, and re-contextualization of Naïve and Outsider Art – the development of which runs parallel to modernism and contemporary art – as well as its integration into existing museum collections as part of art history.

BE HAPPY! WE DO NOT FORGET YOU.

01.10.17 – 28.01.18

William J. Crawford (1881–1929), The medium Kathleen Goligher with ectoplasm on her legs, Belfast, 1920. (Courtesy IGPP e. V., Freiburg i. Br.)

From October 1, 2017 to January 28, 2018, the Sammlung Zander will present the exhibition “Be Happy” We Do Not Forget You” curated by Andreas Fischer and Veit Loers. The focus will be on pictures and documents from the history of occultism, including mediumistic artworks from the Sammlung Zander as well as groups of works by contemporary artists that respond to supernatural transcendental phenomena. “Be Happy! We Do Not Forget You” is an opportunity for audiences to experience aspects of Sammlung Zander from a new historical and cultural perspective. The exhibition comprises roughly 150 exhibition objects by more than 30 artists from at least 15 private and public lenders.

Curated by Andreas Fischer and Veit Loers.

27 Artists, 209 Works.

20.03.2016 – 29.01.2017

Bill Traylor (1853–1949), Man with raised arms, ca. 1939/1942

The new presentation of the Sammlung Zander strives to show the works of the collection without having recourse to conventional attempts at conceptual categorization and classification. Instead, the presentation emphasizes the wealth of artistic positions spanning many decades and emerging from extremely divergent contexts, which should not be reduced to their lowest common denominator but showcased in their irreducible singularity. This approach concentrates above all on the aesthetic quality of the works and refuses simplistic biographical explanations. The presentation thus aims to place these works on an equal footing with other artistic positions.

Curated by Susanne Pfeffer.

CCC – Sava Sekulić Self-Taught
1.11.2015 – 21.2.2016

Sava Sekulić (1902–1989)
Woman turning herself into a Kraken and destroying herself, 1974
Oil on cardboard, 102 x 73 cm

The exhibition “CCC – Sava Sekulić Self-Taught” presents a comprehensive selection from the estate of the artist, who with more than 1000 exhibits and text material is an integral part of the Zander Collection. The artist signed his works with the Cyrillic letters CCC – equivalent for Sava Sekulić Self-Taught, with which he self-confidentially formulated his artistic statement as an autodidact. His decision to acquire artistic processes autodidactically proves in retrospect as a consequential strategy, which in its autonomy and differentiation resembles comparable methods of contemporary art.

With numerous sketches and texts the work reveals the artist’s excellent visual thinking, which permanently corresponds with paintings and drawings. Initially Sava Sekulić worked only figuratively, in the course of the years, however, his motifs became more abstract and complex, whereby the boundaries often are fluid. From picture to picture ever-new mutations and cycles unfold. Often humans, animals, and plants form a formal or contentual connection. They equally embody growth and transformation but also challenge and destruction. During his entire life Sekulić was fascinated by cities, which he often represented as letters or organisms. His own childhood, family, and historical events as the basis of the human existence play just as important a role in the artist’s work.

Born in Bilisani, Croatia, Sava Sekulić (1902–1989) lived last in Belgrade, Serbia. He lost his father early, a traumatic event for him – just as the everyday life, which was characterized by poverty. In 1917, he served at the Austrian-Italian front, was wounded and was blind on the right eye since then. Around 1924, he began to write poetry. Around 1932, the first paintings emerged. After his retirement in 1962 he dedicated himself completely to art.

During his lifetime, the collector Charlotte Zander had the wish to show a retrospective of the artist. At the end of the 1970s, she noticed Sava Sekulić’s paintings for the first time and began to collect him intensively. She acted as a broker for his work in her gallery, on international fairs and exhibitions. Shortly after his death in 1989, Charlotte Zander managed to save part of his estate, among it sketches and poems. She advocated for the reappraisal of Sava Sekulić’s artistic oeuvre. In 1993, she published the only existing comprehensive monograph of the artist and produced a film about him which can also be seen in the exhibition.

Curated by Susanne Zander.

LICKED BY THE WAVES

New bathers in art

06.07. – 06.10.24

FRIEDRICH SCHRÖDER-SONNENSTERN

The three-time Moon World Champion

09.06. – 08.09.24

EXHIBITION 02

23.05. – 31.07.24

The exhibition is extended until April 24, 2024

EXHIBITION 01

25.11.23 – 2.3.24

THE SKY IS THIN

Drawings

10.11.23 – 13.1.24

WHICH MODERNISM?

Insiders and Outsiders of the Avant-Garde

22.10.23 – 14.1.24

A LIFE IN PICTURES

A Portrait of Seeing for Rudolf Zwirner

29.7. – 14.8.23

BIENNALE FOR FREIBURG 2

The Song of the Street

16.6. – 30.7.23

BOOK RELEASE

Koenig Books, Cologne

9.6.23

WHICH MODERNISM? INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hannover

6.5. – 17.9.23

NEW BOOK

26 Artists. Works from the Zander Collection

NAIVE REALISM | From Rousseau to Grandma Moses

Museum MORE, Gorssel

25.3. – 25.6.23

GAME OF NO GAMES

Instructions for Walking in High Spirits

Symposium 11.2.23

THE PAINTERS OF THE SACRED HEART

Böttcherstrasse Museums, Bremen

3.12.22 – 12.3.23

GAME OF NO GAMES

Anleitung zu beschwingtem Gehen

13.11.22 – 5.3.23

MORRIS HIRSHFIELD REDISCOVERED

American Folk Art Museum, New York

23.9.22 – 29.1.23

THE PAINTERS OF THE SACRED HEART

Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden

16.7. – 20.11.22

The Zander Collection Is Taking a New Direction

BE HAPPY! WE DO NOT FORGET YOU.

01.10.17 – 28.01.18

27 Artists, 209 Works.

20.03.2016 – 29.01.2017

CCC – Sava Sekulić Self-Taught 1.11.2015 – 21.2.2016

CCC – Sava Sekulić Self-Taught
1.11.2015 – 21.2.2016