Sammlung Zander — Archive

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.