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Indepth Arts News:
"Baselitz: The Africa Collection"
2003-06-07 until 2003-08-24
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K20 Kunstsammlung am Grabbeplatz - Duesseldorf
Dusseldorf, ,
DE Germany
Once again, the exhibitions program at the Kunstsammlung is turning its attentions to African art. After exhibits featuring selections from the Barbier-Müller private collection in 1988 and from the Royal Museum in Tervuren (Belgium) in 1999, on display this time will be African art from the collection of artist Georg Baselitz.
Georg Baselitz is a well-known collector of mannerist art. To date, however, the public is scarcely aware of his outstanding collection of African art. The fascination of this body of work, gathered over a period of some 25 years, owes to the high level of quality of the individual works of art it contains. Baselitz' interest is primarily in figured plastic art and anthropomorphic sculpture. The artist has chosen this or that piece without regard for aesthetic convention or ethnological system. This sets the collection apart from the approaches so widespread among other private or institutional collectors of African art. The collection, rather, must be viewed in connection with Baselitz' own work.
This exhibition marks the first showing of the roughly 130 works from the Africa Collection of Georg Baselitz. Most of the works on display – grave posts, wooden figures, rag dolls, soothsayers' baskets, fetishes and much more – stem from East and Central Africa. They are made of a variety of materials, such as wood, cloth, stone, metal and wicker.
The curator for the exhibition is Peter Stepan, an extremely well-versed expert on African art. After Düsseldorf, Baselitz' Africa Collection will travel to the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and to the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz. The catalog, featuring an introductory text and contributions on individual works by renowned experts in the field, is being published by Prestel Verlag in Munich.
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