Augustinermuseum | 14 December 2024 – 26 March 2025
Haus der Graphischen Sammlung | 8 November 2024 – 2nd March 2025
Museum für Neue Kunst | 27 September 2024 – 23 February 2025
Archäologisches Museum Colombischlössle | From 4 July 2024
100 years after his death, the Augustinermuseum dedicates a large exhibition to Hans Thoma. In addition to the famous, iconic Black Forest landscapes and genre paintings of the realist, lesser-known works that show clear influences of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, or impressive portraits surprise. Thomas's closeness to folk themes is put up for discussion, using the example of motifs that are Germanic in nature. The exhibition focuses on the artist's graphic work, complemented by selected paintings and handicraft objects.
The late Expressionist artist Fritz Ascher (1893-1970) survived two world wars and persecution by the National Socialist regime. A close observer of the horrors of World War I and revolutionary unrest, he turned to Christian spiritual themes, which he radically reinterpreted. In intimate drawings, he dealt with the theme of love and betrayal from 1916 onward, both in his exploration of the crucifixion theme and with the figure of Bajazzo in the tragicomic opera "I Pagliacci."
Ascher's strong and unique artistic voice is evident not only in his paintings, but also in his poems. These were written when he was no longer allowed to work under National Socialism because of his Jewish roots and as a representative of modernism, and had to go into hiding for years to avoid deportation.
Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz or Hanna Nagel reflect in their works life between the world wars - especially with a view to those people who were socially at the bottom. War experience and trauma, poverty and wealth, political radicalization, strike and revolution, sexuality and intoxication essentially determined the 1920s and 1930s; almost 100 years later, these themes are just as current and are being discussed anew. The exhibition shows works from Expressionism to New Objectivity from the Lindenau Museum Altenburg, supplemented by works from the museum's own collection.
Heaven, hell or paradise? The question of whether there is life after death and what it looks like has preoccupied people since time immemorial. The ideas that existed in the religious world of the early Middle Ages and how the deceased were treated at that time are shown in staged burial rituals and precious grave goods in the new treasure chamber of the Colombischlössle.