Druckgrafik mit Pferd und Reiter
© Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Foto: A. Diesend

The Trend towards Abstraction - Kandinksy and Modernism around 1910

Focusing on Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) the exhibition explores trends towards abstraction in art around 1910, presenting around 100 prints, drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings. A comprehensive selection of Kandinsky‘s printed works from private collections showcases his “discovery” of abstraction. The important role of the woodcuts executed between 1902 and 1912 cannot be valued high enough for Kandinsky’s idea of “the spiritual in art” and the creative process of his abstraction.

  • DATES 15/02/2019—12/05/2019

[Translate to English:] Impressionen

[Translate to English:] Tendenz

The reductive printing technique enabled him to produce strongly simplified flat forms which can also evoke suggestive color resonances. The ideas of the Blue Rider and Kandinsky’s concept of an art that is freed from the limitations of mimesis, following only an “inner necessity,” were developed in dialogue with Gabriele Münter and Franz Marc. The search for formal simplification and abstraction were major concerns of the artistic avantgarde as shown by a small selection of modernist works.

Druckgrafik mit Pferd und Reiter
© Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Foto: A. Diesend
Wassily Kandinsky, Umschlag zum Almanach „Der Blaue Reiter“, Farbholzschnitt, 279 x 212 mm

[Translate to English:] Text

The show is conceived in conjunction with the exhibition Visionary Spaces. Kandinsky, Mondrian, Lissitzky and the Abstract-Constructivist Avant-Garde in Dresden 1919–1932, providing the background for this later period. At the same time a complementary display of photographs by the celebrated Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (* 1948) from the Hoffmann Collection takes the theme of abstraction into the present. Across time and cultures, these minimalistic-abstract photographs enter into a dialogue with Kandinsky’s works.

[Translate to English:] Werke

Hiroshi Sugimoto. Photographs

In the celebrated “Seascapes” by the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (*1948), the horizon line divides the water and sky into two equal fields of different shades of gray. With this minimalistic-abstract representation, the artist strives towards timeless views of the ocean, “ur-images,” as human beings may have already seen them thousands of years ago.

In this and other series, Sugimoto attempts to surpass the photographic moment with concentrated pictures; through a prolonged shutter speed, the dazzling bright screen in the movie theater shows a whole film and makes us think of the “Black and White Square” by Kasimir Malevich. The photographs of the 1001 Buddhas evoke spiritual eternity through their seriality of motif and framing. How can we connect Sugimoto’s contemplative gaze with Kandinsky’s ideas of the spiritual in art?

[Translate to English:] Werke

Program

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[Translate to English:] weitere Ausstellungen

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