Mechthild Haas has not promised too much. Even if it sounds a bit strange to the visitor at first when, just at the beginning of the “From Kollwitz to Serra. Sculptors: Draw Inside” exhibition in the Hessian State Museum, is already being accompanied out, so to speak. And yet the head of the Graphic Collection is undoubtedly right. “When you are through here, you will see the whole building in a completely different way.” As if there weren’t enough seductive exhibits to marvel at in the Karl Freund Gallery.
In the first room, reserved for figurative drawings from the 1920s and 1930s, one might pause a little longer in front of Käthe Kollwitz’s “The Sculptor”, which programmatically opened the show, or in front of Christoph Voll’s expressive “Breast Portrait of a Sitting One”, which refers directly to his works in wood young woman” or in front of the “Rötelstudie-Brecht” on a sheet of music by Gustav Seitz. In addition to such wonderful sheets, there are also one or two sculptures in the exhibition that sometimes correspond directly to the drawing. Right next door, for example, Hermann Geibel’s terracotta panther lures along with a handful of study sheets, Seitz’s 1959 portrait head sets striking sculptural accents, and one may be enchanted by Ewald Mataré’s color woodcut “Nächtliche Weide” with the accompanying bronze cow.
Not everything became sculpture
Mechthild Haas and Ksenija Tschetschik-Hammerl’s selection of their works, all of which come from the museum’s collection, is by no means primarily about documenting the process from the idea to the study to the three-dimensional sculpture. That’s just the little something extra of this truly exhilarating show. Above all, it is important to the two curators to honor the sculptural drawing, which has only been recognized as a genre in its own right since Documenta 6. As works of their own relevance. By no means all of the 68 drawings, etchings and lithographs were actually realized by the 35 artists represented.
What’s more, the closer the exhibition brings the viewer to the contemporaries and from the figure to abstraction, the more the positions quite naturally reach out to other media. This is already true of a position that is primarily identified in the field of painting, such as that of the “Quadriga” artist Bernard Schultze, who is represented with a sheet from the portfolio “Darmstadt im Quadrat”. But also for the now 84-year-old Richard Serra, whose extensive graphic work wants to be seen independently of his enormous works in steel. For Franz Erhard Walther’s “Inside and Outside” in pencil and colored pencil, coffee, oil and stain as well as for the equally reduced and poetic conceptual work of John Cage, who is primarily perceived as a composer.
Connections to the art city of Darmstadt
And again and again, connections to the art city of Darmstadt open up right here, at the seams. About Cage, of course, who was a guest at the Summer Courses for New Music for the first time in 1958. But also with Fred Sandback, whose apparently casual drawing, showing little more than a handful of lines drawn with red pastel chalk, presents the precise concept for his Darmstadt exhibition in the mid-1970s. And by no means least, it is Vera Röhm, who celebrated her 80th birthday this spring, the internationally successful grande dame of Darmstadt sculpture, who has a grand appearance here. Like most positions in the show, she is only represented with just one or two works on paper.
And yet one may not only find the essential themes of her sculptural work reflected in the large-format “Angle Supplement” in red chalk and charcoal and in the model of the “Light-Ray-Oak”. It is the concept of the exhibition that is shown in nuce in front of her work. And makes you want to stroll through the museum’s collections on your own. When you leave the Karl Freund-Gallery, you find yourself in the Spierer Collection, where, alongside sculptures such as Henry Moore and Alexander Archipenko, a work by Vera Röhm also expands the show into space and the third dimension with captivating casualness.
Say hello to Tony Cragg’s sculpture
And as if to remind you once again that Mechthild Haas was obviously right, a few steps further and halfway up the stairs, a huge sculpture by Tony Cragg, who is represented in “From Kollwitz to Serra” with a series of etchings, greets you. Of course, before you hurry out and into the Herrngarten to see Röhm’s original “Light Beam Oak” which has been rising ten meters into the air since 2015, you shouldn’t shy away from a walk through the house. There are plastics and sculptures, apart from the Spierer Collection, which is presented as a whole, and they are always distributed throughout the house. Lo and behold, once on a tour of discovery, the viewer is soon tempted to take further detours time and time again.
One could only just be enchanted by Emy Roeder’s “Two lying goats” in chalk on paper or “Two standing girls”, whose works are undoubtedly among the highlights of the exhibition, which is not stingy with magnificent sheets. Now, at the end of the tour of the Kargel building, one sees oneself surrounded by older and younger masters since the Renaissance in the collection of paintings. And yet she can hardly break away from Roeder’s two bronze girls, who are barely 30 centimeters tall. You look different, in fact. And then hurries back the next moment.
Published/Updated: Recommendations: 5 Camilla Blechen Published/Updated: Recommendations: 14 Christoph Schütte Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 4
■From Kollwitz to Serra until September 3, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Friedensplatz 1, open Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday to 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Conversation with Vera Röhm on August 30 from 6:30 p.m.
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