FLOWERS! Blumen in der Kunst des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, Museum Ostwall, Dortmund

2022

Flowers accompany us in everyday life and are associated with personal memories. At the same time, they have been a common theme in art for centuries. With the Baroque era, the flower still life became an independent pictorial genre in which both the beauty of nature and the transience of earthly existence were expressed. The motif has not lost its fascination in modern and contemporary art either. Starting in April 2022, the Museum Ostwall in the Dortmunder U will be presenting artistic positions from its own collection from the 20th and 21st centuries, which focus on flowers and use a wide variety of media such as painting, photography, video and installation.

To this day, international artists take up the tradition of floral still lifes and natural history field research; on the other hand, they separate the subject from these genre-specific contexts and develop it further. The works in the exhibition show the expansion of meaning and the artistic topicality of this motif: from the formal examination to reflection on oneself, on socio-political and gender-specific issues, on the environment or new technologies. In this context, the flower appears like an empty vessel into which everyone, whether artists or viewers, can fill their own interpretations.

With works by Hans Arp, Anita Albus, Max Beckmann, Renate Bertlmann, Joseph Beuys, Stephanie Brysch, Klaus Burkhardt, Johannes Cladders, Felix Dobbert, Quynh Dong, Max Ernst, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Fischli/Weiss, Andreas Gursky, Hannah Höch , David Hockney, Alexej von Jawlensky, Maria Louise Kaempffe, Judith Kaminski, Peco Kawashima, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ana Mendieta, Claire Morgan, Paul Morrison, Gabriele Münter, Heinrich Nauen, Ursula Neugebauer, Emil Nolde, Walter Ophey, Meret Oppenheim, Régis Perray, Otto Piene, Joos van de Plas, Marc Quinn, Odilon Redon, Gerhard Richter, Pipilotti Rist, Christian Rohlfs, Dieter Roth, Ulrike Rosenbach, Martha Rosler, Hito Steyerl, Anaïs Tondeur, Günther Uecker, Timm Ulrichs, Suzanne Valadon, Philipp Valenta, Bernd Völkle, Andy Warhol and Annette Wehrmann.

Photos: Roland Baege