Kunstmuseum Bonn displays Franz Ackermann's Very Colorful Paintings

Written by Bernd Singer Sunday, 07 November 2010 17:28

BONN, GERMANY - Franz Ackermann who was born in Neumarkt St. Veit (Bavaria) in 1963 is one of the most innovative painters of the past ten years. Since 2001 this internationally acclaimed artist has also been employed as a professor at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. Time and time again, he manages to make an impression with his room filling and extremely colourful pictures, drawings and installations which effortlessly combine elements of globalised society with apparently purely pictorial aspects. On exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bonn through 21 February, 2010.

The basis for Franz Ackermann’s artistic approach is travelling. During his sojourns in different places all over the world he creates small drawings and aquarelles. These mostly abstract sketches, the so-called “Mental Maps”, portray urban structures and combine objectives of topography with the artist’s mental experiences of foreign cultures. These “Mental Maps” are the nucleus from which Franz Ackermann develops his room filling and very colourful paintings. They often focus on references to contemporary crises in parts of the world which he has visited.

Apart from his drawings and paintings, Franz Ackermann creates room filling installations which consist of a large array of different materials and sometimes also integrate everyday elements, such as furniture, clothes and magazines. Franz Ackermann is to develop a new set of works for the Kunstmuseum Bonn where they will be exhibited for the first time.

Museum operates its own popular program; its main theme is to portray the development of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945 - the Bonn Republic. The Kunstmuseum Bonn is incontestably a place of aesthetic experience, a space reserved for the visual arts.

The collections and the dimensions of the museum reflect this orientation. The aim of its collections are: art from 1900 up to tomorrow. The museum is implicitly directed toward the future. The collections have their specific focal points like that of the Rhenish Expressionists, the art of the 50s in the Federal Republic, but above all the 60s, 70s, 80s and the beginning 90s. The museum does concentrate on German art but this does not exclude the fact that - like Robert Delaunay in the section on Macke - international examples of exceptional post-'45 art are also shown, e.g., the Englishman Richard Long in combination with Blinky Palermo, Beuys with Fontana, Kounellis and Merz.

The Kunstmuseum concentrates on focal points that have evolved over the years and were already laid down in Bonn's cultural politics of the 50s and 60s, namely German art and its international ties. This German art is centered on few names. Whole blocks were collected, work groups assembled, whether from Baselitz, Beuys, Darboven, Kiefer, Knoebel, Laib, Palermo, Penck, Polke, Richter, etc. There is no other place in the world where post-'45 German art can be studied so choicely, so particularly and so concisely as in Bonn. This objective will remain the same in the future. However, it has for many years been complemented by an internationally active Graphic Collection, whose serial works on paper include those of Beuys (as well as his multiples), Max Ernst's illustrated books and graphic works (Bolliger Collection), etc., as well as the video collection (Oppenheim Collection). For the past two and a half years, these focal points have been expanded to include the art of photography. In just this way our art museum has also grown to become a meeting place for discussions, lectures and entertainment in other media like video, film, music, theater.

Visit the Kunstmuseum Bonn at : www.kunstmuseum.bonn.de

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