Dear Sir or Madam, dear colleagues,

In the winter of 2012/2013, LehmbruckMuseum in Duisburg is presenting "Simple. Individual. Unique", a wide-ranging exhibition dedicated to one of the most important German expressionists, Otto Mueller. Please allow me to send you our first press release to this exhibition today, to be shown from 16 November 2012 until 24 February 2013, and hosting around 140 works gathered from both private and public ownership. A comprehensive, three-volume catalogue in German will be published on the occasion of the show with illustrations of all works exhibited that we would be pleased to send to you prior to commencement. The exhibition by the Otto Mueller-Gesellschaft e. V. Weimar will be conceived and realised by Dr. Hans-Dieter Mück, Apolda, and will be hosted by the LehmbruckMuseum with support from the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation and the Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Dr. Gottlieb Leinz from our museum bears primary
responsibility for the project.

If desired, you can receive both images for editorial coverage and a special invitation to the press conference before the set date (15 November 2012), and if you have any questions or interview requests, please do not hesitate to contact me.

With kind regards,
Florian Blaschke

Please forward this message to your department of culture and events editor.

Below is a press release from the LehmbruckMuseum:

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"Simple. Individual. Unique": the LehmbruckMuseum in Duisburg, Germany will be showing 140 works of the expressionist Otto Mueller (16 November 2012 to 24 February 2013)

With "Simple. Individual. Unique", the winter of 2012/2013 in Duisburg will see one of the most comprehensive insights until now into the life and work of one of the most important artists of the German Expressionist movement. The exhibition will illuminate the complete creative period of Mueller from 1902 to 1929 with 140 works from public and private ownership, including eight from the collection of the LehmbruckMuseum as well as with archives, documents and photographic material.

Otto Mueller is deemed to be one of the most important representatives of German Expressionism, and to be able to comprehend the immense artistic influence of him throughout his life, a glimpse of the year 1910 is all that is needed, or put more precisely, a glimpse of the reasoning behind the request from his younger colleagues to become part of the "Brücke" group of artists. The trigger for this was the painting from 1903 of the murdering "Maschka as Lucretia". It was no less a personage than Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner who termed her the "Cranachian Venus" in the Brücke Chronicles from 1913, that along with Max Pechstein's amazons, the signet of the "Neue Sezession" (or New Secession) in Berlin, was the expression and fighting figure of an offensive form of art targeted against conservatism and the establishment. Lucretia was not merely Mueller's entry to the Brücke but also the initial igniting factor for Kirchner's occupation with Cranach and the figure of Venus.

Mueller's entry into the Brücke, the association of artists founded in 1905, was not only a stroke of luck and the commencement of an exciting and active exchange of artistic sensibilities, but also led to a long, one-dimensional view of the painter and lithographer as Brücke painter and as the "Gypsy-Mueller", the two terms used to characterise Mueller, born in 1874 in Silesian Liebau, over a period of many decades, and thus also seriously misjudging the uniqueness of his oevre. Merely three large retrospectives of Mueller's work, 1931 in Breslau and Berlin, 1957 in Hanover, Bremen, Hagen and Duisburg and 2003 in Munich, are ample proof of this sad state of affairs.

"Simple. Individual. Unique" follows on from these exhibitions with one of the most comprehensive insights into the life and work of one of the most essential artists of German Expressionism. Following showings in the art collections of Zwickau and Kunsthalle Vogelmann in Heilbronn, the exhibition can be seen once again in extended form in the LehmbruckMuseum in Duisberg from 16 November 2012 to 24 February 2013.

Although some of his works were shown posthumously at the documenta 1 in Kassel (1955), a reasonable, adequate assessment of Otto Mueller has been hindered until the present time. The "Otto Mueller Gesellschaft" (Otto Mueller Association) founded in 2010 in Weimar, that in their first yearly compendium on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the artist's death dealt with several erroneous assessments and also published new art-historical findings, is also organising this exhibition with a view to making known and verifying new art-historical findings about Mueller and his oevre. With 140 works from public and private ownership, including eight from the collection of the LehmbruckMuseum as well as with archives, documents and photographic material, the show serves to illuminate Mueller's complete creative period from 1902 to 1929.

A short excerpt from a "Spiegel" article published in 1963 demonstrates how strongly the image of Mueller is characterised by stereotypical opinions. "He had blue-black hair and a yellow skin colour, travelled year in and year out to Gypsy colonies on the Balkans, travelled with them across the countryside, wore a Gypsy amulet on his chest and even got used to bacon as the favoured dish of the gypsies, 'although before that he was never able to eat bacon', as his sister testified." Mueller can be thankful to his uncle, Carl Hauptmann, for this somewhat momentous description, the elder brother of the author Gerhart Hauptmann. In Carl Hauptmann's novel "Einhart der Lächler" (Einhart the Smiler) the painter himself is transformed into a gypsy, and Mueller was careful to avoid contradicting this legend during his lifetime, as his erotic and exotic paintings sold well on the art market in the first and second decades of the previous century.

But in contrast to this legend, a closer look at the wide-ranging painterly output of Mueller shows that only very few of his later paintings, drawings and lithographs show gypsies. Instead of this, a completely differing passion of Mueller can be discovered, who in contrast to the Blue Rider member Franz Marc or the Brücke colleague Emil Nolde, remained a realist by depicting naked girls. There are hundreds of these in his work. Slender figures, simply portrayed with simple lines and perfect in terms of artisan skill, alone, in groups, often as a part of Nature, and most often in the landscapes surrounding the Moritzburg lakes near to Dresden. They pose openly, standing, lying or kneeling, and indeed it may well be this unforced, natural eroticism that harmed Mueller's reputation for a long period of time not perhaps in the eyes of the public but predominantly with art historians.

It is no wonder when viewing his lascivious and gaunt figures that the slender, elongated limbs of the paintings of Lucas Cranach the Elder more than impressed Mueller, and it's even less a wonder that Mueller exerted an immense influence on the language of form adopted by Wilhelm Lehmbruck. The paintings produced since 1909, often using distemper on rough canvas, were the expression of a longing for naturalness, for simplicity and the radiance of Nature. With this yearning and with his innate style, Mueller achieved a high level of predominance, and not only with the artists of the Brücke, the association of which he was a member from 1910 until its disbanding in 1913. At this time he had already benefited from training as a lithographer and had completed studies over a course of two years at the Academy in Dresden, quitting out of protest against the emptiness and inherent complacency of the elder academic powers. The level of accomplishment in terms of technique and style already
achieved by 1908 ensured the sovereignty of Mueller's landscapes and figurative scenes, that in this retrospective set new accents by specifically doing without Gypsy romanticism and unworldliness.

In his portraits and representations of nudes Mueller continuously selected the same models, always his lovers or wives. His first marriage in 1905 with Maschka Mayerhofer following five years of acquaintance remained firm until 1920. Divorce followed one year later. After Maschka, the artist's relationships become shorter, the women younger. Irene Altmann, Elsbeth Lübke and Elfriede Timm are the three partly under-age women he paints almost to the point of obsession between 1919 and 1930. The meaning of his relationships for his art thus forms the most important train of thought for through the Duisberg exhibition. From Maschka to Elfriede, these demonstrate Mueller's development, ranging from the over-life size "Lucretia" of 1903 up until the last full figure portrait of Elfriede Timm in 1927/1929.

But despite this fixation, Mueller's image of woman is distinct from that of his contemporaries. His girls and young women are self-confident, are at one with Nature, at one with themselves, happy, pleased and incessantly virginial. There does however exist a second side to his female depictions, a dramatic side. For example the painting entitled "The Murder", recently rediscovered below the rear protective board of the "Pair at Table" painting, shows a more cryptic view of Mueller with regard to the relationships between man and woman, and if his own life is considered with his many partly unhappy relationships, then such abysses may well have autobiographical traits. The artist's paintings though do have one characteristic in common, and this is their "brand label", a monumentality in the depiction of the naked female and male body within an anonymous and yet highly personal Nature, causing his figurative images to radiate a sense of timeless harmony.

This emotionally and sexually charged biographical background contrasts with the cool, calculating Otto Mueller, who thanks in addition to the support of the Berlin gallerists Möller and Nierendorf, sold well during his lifetime. His market orientation and tactical skill when handling gallery owners, museums and collectors can be traced in the correspondence with his wife Maschka, both during the difficult time of the First World War and later when the artist held the post of professor at the Breslau Academy of Visual Arts from 1919 onwards.

The uniqueness of Mueller and his work emanating from such facets was reason enough for countless portraits of the artist painted by his Brücke colleagues, a selection of which can also be seen in the exhibition at Duisberg. These pay tribute to the exalted position of Mueller in German Expressionist art and to the partly friendly appreciation of painters such as Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) and Hermann Max Pechstein (1881-1955). "Otto Mueller has left us a timeless and yet highly contemporary oevre..." stated the exhibition's leading curator, Hans-Dieter Mück, "...in the originality of his depiction and painterly methods and with exemplary artistic quality, to be discovered afresh and anew in a completely unprejudiced way." It is to this discovery that the show "Simple. Individual. Unique." cordially invites you.

Catalogue

A comprehensive, three-volume German language catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition depicting all exhibited works, edited by Hans-Dieter Mück and Dieter W. Posselt, with support from the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation.

Volume I: Accompanying book with depictions and descriptions of all works shown, and with a reflection on the theme of "Simple. Individual. unique" from Dieter W. Posselt (172 pages).

Volume II: Hans-Dieter Mück: Otto Mueller — attempt at a reconstruction of his life and works according to documents from the archive of the Otto Mueller Association (170 pages with 221 documentary illustrations).

Volume III: Reprint of contemporary documentary texts and new art-historical contributions from Hans-Dieter Mück, Helmut Herbst, Henrike Holsing, Gottlieb Leinz and Hans Portsteffen (152 pages with 95 documentary illustrations).

Retail price: Volumes I, II and III: 15 euros each. All in slip case: 35 euros.

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Florian Blaschke
Department of Communications and Public Relations

LehmbruckMuseum
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