Constructivists in Dresden : New ease

organized by the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1983, a wide-ranging exhibition dedicated to Wassily Kandinsky, the house of the Holy of the Museum, graced "The Black square" the Catalogue cover. The painting, part of the collection since 1937, was previously owned by a Dresden collector, Victor Rubin, had purchased in June of 1923, created only months later by the artist. Ruby was one of his Dresden years to the small but significant circle of Dresdner collectors and patrons, who all opted for the avant-garde, the means for abstraction and constructivism.

You RUB the eyes, if now in the exhibition of the Dresden State art collections, "in the Future. Kandinsky, Mondrian, Lissitzky and the abstract-constructive avant-garde in Dresden from 1919 to 1932“, at least to know what was issued in the troubled years between the First world war and the Nazi dictatorship, everything in Dresden and collected. This conservative infamous city, which had however to 1906, the expressionist "Brücke" and in the twenties, the social critic Otto Dix allows, was also a center of non-representational Modernism.

The constructivists made the room feel alive

Piet Mondrian, the co-Creator of the movement "De Stijl", had his first German exhibition in 1925, in the gallery of Cool & Bold. A photograph shows the gallery space, apparently the room of an apartment in which a half-dozen paintings of the uncompromising Dutchman. Two of the factory owner's wife, Ida, bought Bienert, three, her son, Fritz, was married to the expression of the dancer Gret Palucca and a Mondrian picture in your exercise room attached. The two collectors had in their respective villas to the most important collections of the Modern, which were to be found in Florence on the Elbe.

Over – the course of German history has scattered collections. At the end of the Second world war, Dresden was almost wiped out, and in socialist times, there could be no reference to the care of non-figurative Modern and more. Galleries and collectors were forgotten. As the State art collections of 2012, Wants to put the important quarter of the critic, facilitator and promoter Grohmann in the center of an archival exhibition, flashed something of the old times; Grohmann was a close Confidant of Kandinsky or Paul Klee.

Grohmann finds, of course, in the current exhibition his place. The collector Ida Bienert wrote to him in the grim year of 1932, a sentence that sounds like the leitmotif of the event: "In my eyes, the constructivists Lissitzky, Moholy, Mondrian played a very important role, they have made the new space a feeling of what the architects wanted, alive, and brought to a close. Anything Unnecessary fall. There was at once a lightness in the space and Fullness.“

Five Mondrians from all over the world to see

"feeling of space" – that is the cue for those tendencies, which met in Dresden on guard readiness. Mondrian designed Bienert in 1926, an abstract space for the Ida, a space of creation, which should lift his painting and the theory of the "De Stijl" in the third Dimension. This cube is not yet built remained-shaped room. Otherwise, the "demonstration room" for abstract art, the Russian Jack of all trades, El Lissitzky established in the same year for the "International art exhibition" in Dresden. He was a role model for the "Abstract Cabinet", which was able to realize Lissitzky two years later in Hannover and found by the reconstruction in the Sprengel Museum from much more attention.

Lissitzky's demonstration room is now in the exhibition in the Albertinum – gallery of paintings by New masters – simulated. In the absence of the authentic works of art from 1926, destroyed, lost or for loaning to fragile, Ko worried-curator Birgit Dalbajewa, Russian, Hungarian, and Romanian paintings that come close at the time shown. Also, the "composition Z VIII" of the Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy, 1924, of the Berlin national gallery has a place.

meaningful due as of this cube the other events at that time can be do not resuscitate. Wonderful that five of Mondrian's – if not the bienert's – from all over the world on loan, as well as on the opposite wall, four Klee, or to another wall portion has a plurality of Kandinsky's, the self-assured compositions of Lissitzky, which he covered with the word "Proun".

The intimate character of the works is stretched to-be-missed

However, in the long and by no built-in divided the main hall of the Albertinum, the works on the walls, and some of the furniture ensemble, such as a counterfeit living-room corner with the steel pipe lose furniture, are not able to remedy it. Maybe it was the guiding principle, to make the Abundance and diversity of at the time shown and collected art with a glance, instead of rooms in themes.

But this abstract and constructive art, which is propagated to make the whole world new, was also obtained, but in chamber music on the manageable space. She seemed to be in the room of an art of action, in the second floor of the collector or on the table, on the graphic lovers delve into individual sheets. This intimate character that appears in an almost paradigmatic way in the well-known photographs of Mondrian's modest Parisian Atelier in the mid-twenties years, will be missed in the current exhibition. Actually, amazing.

Even the catalog, which is more of a companion book, and in his rich illustration material far beyond what could be borrowed in reality for the exhibition helpful. In the contributions of the former Dresdner art scene rises. In it also appears the head of the International exhibition of 1926, Hans Posse – the Posse, shortly before the beginning of the war in 1939, of Hitler for the "sonderauftrag Linz" was obliged, the gathering of works of art for the planned "führer Museum" in Linz. Here, however, the former Museum man comes to the view, since 1910 Director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie and in the twenties one of the most committed advocates of the avant-garde at all. What a split personality!

present in the view

keep the history of The reception of art, their public effect or Non-effect, is illustrated in an exhibition to be difficult. And even more difficult when an artistic design came to the execution, such as Mondrian's space cube for Ida Bienert. Him, the Austrian artist has achieved Heimo Zobernig in the vast atrium of the Albertinum approximations; he calls it "spatial appropriation". A total of four contemporary artists were invited, the torn-off thread of yore, and the collection of the Albertinum loosen up.

these are taken in a lively intervention, but the connection to the historical exhibition on the avant-garde remains loose. However, it is the declared aim of the Museum Director Marion Ackermann, to always keep the present in view, and a young audience. Rather, this idea hits the bow at that time, since the abstract and constructive art was at the forefront of the development of art and there is a small number of enthusiasts took to put in Dresden at least for a few years feet.

New Director of the Dresden State art, such As Marion Ackermann, a visit to the deep and Pegida collections will-crisis

Dresden, Albertinum, up to 2. June. Catalog in Sandstone publishing, 336 p., 26 €, in the book trade, 48 €. More: www.skd.museum