1910 FIGURE 2010

The exhibition is being held to mark the 60th anniversary of the Georg Kolbe Museum, which opened on 18 June 1950. Convinced of the enduring topicality of figurative sculpture, the exhibition juxtaposes works from the early modern period with contemporary works. A spectrum of more than twenty sculptures in total makes the differences and similarities of the sculptural image of man tangible over the course of a century.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Georg Kolbe’s generation placed the autonomous image of man at the centre of their work. Works created around 1910 show the range of neoclassical and expressionist design. Works from this period by Kurt Edzard (1890-1972), Ernesto de Fiori (1884-1945), Bernhard Hoetger (1874-1949), Fritz Klimsch (1870-1960), Georg Kolbe (1877-1949), Hugo Lederer (1871-1940), Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919), Ernst Seger (1865-1939) and Arthur Volkmann (1851-1941) are on display in the exhibition.

In dialogue with this is contemporary figurative sculpture, which has developed an unexpected topicality and diversity in the last ten years. For a long time, it was rather marginalised in the context of contemporary art production. The historical burden of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century’s appropriation of the sculptural image of man weighed too heavily. The monument mania of the 19th century and its inflationary trivialisation of statesmen, poets and military leaders in public spaces stood before the artists of the post-war period as a second negative foil. Only the overcoming of the cultural-political contradictions of the Cold War in the decade following reunification led to a real re-evaluation of figurative art. Under these conditions, figurative sculpture freed itself from its ideological baggage in the years 2000-2010 and gave new impetus to an entire generation of artists. Works by Ubbo Enninga (1955), Patrycja German (1979), John Isaacs (1968), Christian Janowski (1968), Iris Kettner (1968), Markus Leitsch (1978), Robert Metzkes (1954), Simon Schubert (1976), Pia Stadtbäumer (1959), Mathilde ter Heijne (1969), Veronika Veit (1968) and Klaus Wimichner (1967) will be exhibited.