Museum Frieder Burda exhibits 'Nature in Contemporary Art'

Written by Clarence Persinger Friday, 03 February 2012 21:08

Baden-Baden, Germany - Nature is making its appearance at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. The new show, that runs through February 08, 2009, is entitled “Nature. Contemporary art from the Altana Art Collection”. The exhibition displays a selection of approximately 80 exhibited works by painters such as Georg Baselitz, Herbert Brandl, Franz Gertsch, Roni Horn, Axel Hütte, Alex Katz, Karin Kneffel, Wolfgang Laib, Norbert Tadeusz, Robert Longo and Markus Lüpertz, showing the variety of ways and methods, in which artists of the 20th and 21st century deal with the subject “nature” and man’s interference with it.

The examination of nature is essential to humankind and therefore inevitably one of art’s primary themes. People have been exploring their relationship to their surroundings since cave painting. Following more of a romantic and affirmative view of nature in the nineteenth century, twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists have increasingly thematized the threat to, and human intervention in, nature. In what are occasionally vexingly beautiful pictures, it is often only at second or third glance that astonishment and critical scrutiny set in.

Central point of interest of the collection of the Altana Kulturstiftung, a cultural foundation with seat in Bad Homburg, is art relating to “Nature” in a broad sense, including all creation. For the first time ever, a selection of the collection’s major works leave Bad Homburg to be presented in the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. The Richard Meier designed museum building with its various views on the surrounding landscape garden of the Lichtentaler Allee, is the ideal venue for such a thematic exhibition. Numerous works relating to the subject of landscape and nature are also included in the Frieder Burda Collection. A selection of works by Alex Katz, Georg Baselitz, Karin Kneffel and Heribert C. Ottersbach will therefore complement the Altana Art Collection.

Andrea Firmenich, director of the Altana Collection: “From the very beginning, man, as a thinking creature, felt inclined to reflect on nature and his relationship to it.” And from the very beginning, art has been an important means of expression. After the more romantic view on nature that characterized art throughout the 19th century, the artists of the 20th and 21st century concentrate increasingly on endangered nature and man’s interference with it. Yet, the displayed works are of such an almost irritating beauty, that it is often only on second or third sight that the hidden criticism and indignation will be revealed.

Some of the world’s most eminent contemporary painters, feeling the ceaseless up-to-dateness of the topic, dedicated themselves to the representation of nature. But artists react to news about climatic change, extinction of endangered species or ruinous exploitation of resources in quite different ways. The exhibition will enable visitors to discover the artists’ individual approaches, showing the scope of the subject “nature” in painting, drawing, photography, installation and sculpture.

Initially a collection of the company Altana, the Altana Art Collection comprises today approximately 600 works of international contemporary art relating to the subject “nature”. Since 2007, the collection is in the ownership of the Altana Kulturstiftung. The collection unites works by more than 60 artists of different nationalities. Without exception, the works deal with the relationship of man and nature, yet its topics may range from landscapes to single creatures or vegetal details.

The image of an ideal and perfect nature has long since begun to falter. Artists react seismographically to news about climatic disaster, the extinction of threatened species, or the depletion of natural resources and confront us with their subjective response, which frequently shatters our concept of heroic, manageable, and controllable nature.

Nature in a broad sense, encompassing creatures and creation, is the thematic focus of the Altana Art Collection in Bad Homburg. What was initially a corporate collection now includes circa six hundred works of international contemporary art from the last twenty years.

In addition, interesting points of contact emerge between several artists and the Frieder Burda Collection, out of which works are being presented by Alex Katz, Georg Baselitz, Karin Kneffel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Heribert C. Ottersbach, and others.

The catalogue is available for purchase at the museum for €29.00. Visit : www.sammlung-frieder-burda.de/index_e.html

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