Press- Release

Major Retrospective with van Gogh, Picasso, Munch, Schiele

Wallraf to stage the centennial Sonderbund exhibition

A hundred years ago, Cologne played host to one of the most

important exhibitions of the twentieth century: the now legendary

Sonderbund exhibition. With more than 650 artworks by masters

such as Cézanne, Cross, Gauguin, van Gogh, Picasso, Macke,

Munch, Nolde and Schiele, it was breathtaking both in terms of

quantity and quality. In the conservative Germany of the Kaisers,

the exhibition was tantamount to a revolution, and became the most

important harbinger of modern art in Germany.

To mark the centenary, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum is reviving

this unique exhibition under the title ‘1912 – Mission Moderne’ from

31 August to 30 December 2012. To this end, the museum is

gathering some 120 high-calibre exhibits from all around the world,

including 15 paintings by Vincent van Gogh alone. The spectrum of

the show ranges from Post-impressionism across German

Expressionism, represented by the young painters of Die Brücke

and Der Blaue Reiter, all the way to early Cubism.

Among the lenders of works for the retrospective are the Van Gogh

Museum in Amsterdam, the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, the Art

Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery in London, the Museum of

Modern Art in New York, the Munch-Museum in Oslo, the Musée

d’Orsay in Paris, and the National Gallery in Washington. But for

the duration of ‘1912 – Mission Moderne’ numerous private

collectors have also agreed to part with masterpieces, some of

which have not been displayed in public for decades.

With this unique retrospective the Wallraf is demonstrating how

innovative, revolutionary and pathbreaking the Sonderbund

exhibition really was. As a new kind of exhibition, it set standards

still valid today, as well as influencing such major events as the

New York Armory Show of 1913 and the first documenta in Kassel

in 1955.

‘1912 – Mission Moderne’ is only to be seen in the Wallraf and for

experts and the general public alike must be one of the highlight

exhibitions of 2012.

Press- Release

A Look Back at an Exhibition of the Century

It is 1912. Cologne is the venue for the ‘Internationale Kun-

stausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und

Künstler’ (‘International Art Exhibition of the Special League

(Sonderbund) of West German Artists and Art-lovers’). The

organizers succeeded in staging a super-coup. With its 650 or so

exhibits, including no less than 125 works by van Gogh, 26 by

Cézanne, 25 by Gauguin, 32 by Munch and 16 by Picasso, the

Sonderbund exhibition is still regarded as the most important

presentation of European modern art to have been held in Ger-

many. The then director of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Alfred

Hagelstange, was one of the four-man Sonderbund jury whose

selection carried the reputation of Cologne as one of the ‘front

runners in modern art’ across the world. For the purpose, the

organizers, who also included Alfred Flechtheim and Karl Ernst

Osthaus, the founder of the Folkwang collection, purchased a

temporary hall which had been used for the 1910 Brussels World

Fair and reconstructed it at the Aachener Tor.

The Sonderbund exhibition is also regarded as a departure from

the typical exhibitions of the nineteenth century, which were

characterized by their lack of theme and imagination. With their

international and programmatic approach, the curators created a

totally new kind of exhibition. Instead of hanging the pictures

closely together, as was customary at the time, they had most

pictures hung in a single row on white walls. This achievement may

not look much today, but it was revolutionary at the time. The

exhibits came across quite differently.

The imagination of the organizers went even further, though. For

the first time, visitors could buy a brief guide to the exhibits. And,

another first, there was a refreshment room. In addition, the

exhibition was advertised widely by means of posters, banners and

flags. All of these innovations made the Sonderbund exhibition a

pioneering event in the history of art, one which set standards still

valid today.

Press- Release

And only today, at a distance of a hundred years, can the then

innovations be interpreted as a high point of European art. The

dominant artistic currents of the time can now be seen as different

strands in a great development, strands which began to come

together in 1912. The retrospective additionally makes it clear that

the simultaneous inspiration emanating from the Fauves in France

or the artists of the Brücke and the Blauer Reiter in Germany were

more closely related in their aims than was realized at the time.

There was a golden jubilee exhibition in 1962, and even then the

organizers, in the catalogue, admiringly stressed the great far-

sightedness and judgement (‘such as any exhibitor might wish for’)

of the organizers in 1912: ‘They recognized most of the important

artists of the then young generation, and exhibited typical works by

them. And even the most recent trends, which were later to become

pioneering, all the way to Abstraction, were already visible in 1912

(and represented in the exhibition in the form of the then latest

tendencies in the work of Picasso and Kandinsky) – compositions

which can serve as models for the art of a century.’

But the First World War was to interrupt this development in

gruesome fashion. Some of the promising talents were snuffed out,

and art needed time to overcome the horrors of the war.

‘1912 – Mission Moderne’ will give a concise picture of the art of a

hundred years ago, and at the same time show how modern art

developed from there in a way that the organizers of 1912 could

only speculate upon. The curator of the retrospective, Barbara

Schaefer, has, by dint of years of research, managed to identify

almost all of the 650 works displayed at the time, and found out

where they are today. She has succeeded in at last bringing back

120 of the masterpieces back to Cologne. And in the accompanying

catalogue, the Sonderbund show will be almost completely

reconstructed, the result of meticulous research which no one

hitherto has even attempted.

Further information can be obtained at www.wallraf.museum under NOW.

Press- Release

Historical images of the „Sonderbundausstellung“ and her organizers:

Sonderbundausstellung 1912, Munch-Room, © RBA Köln

Sonderbundausstellung 1912, Organizer of the „Sonderbundausstellung“, © RBA Köln

„Sonderbundausstellung“ 1912, Exhibitionhall, Aachener Tor in Cologne, © RBA Köln

Press- Release

WALLRAF-RICHARTZ-MUSEUM & FONDATION CORBOUD

Obenmarspforten (am Kölner Rathaus)

50667 Köln

Tel.: 0049-221/221-21119

info@wallraf.museum

www.wallraf.museum

Admission

Adults: 12 ! (per person)

Concession: 10 ! (per person)

Groups: 10 ! (per person for 10 to 25 people)

Schools: 4 ! (per pupil)

Families: 24 ! (two persons with children)

Opening hours

Tuesday to Sunday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Every Thursday till 9 p.m.

Public Holiday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Closed Mondays, as well as on December 24 and 25.

Booking guided tours and registering guided group tours:

HOTLINE: 0049 (0) 221 / 221 – 26504

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