Female Global Modern – Neue Werke in der Sammlung

In the organizer's words:

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is known for its key works of classical modern and post-war art. Now, numerous new acquisitions from recent years are being presented in the collection galleries of the K20. They expand the art historical canon and reflect the beginning of a process in which the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is opening up to a polyphonic, plural, and inclusive narrative of modernism.

On view are newly acquired key works by pioneering female painters Etel Adnan, Helen Frankenthaler, Carmen Herrera, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter, Alice Neel, and Lygia Pape. They programmatically demonstrate the significant contributions women artists have made to the development of modern art. Paintings by Hassan El-Telmisani, Fouad Kamel, and Mayo expand the narratives of Surrealism to include perspectives from northern Africa. Park Seo-Bo, an important representative of monochrome painting in South Korea, meets Mark Rothko and Yves Klein. Works by contemporary artists Kader Attia and Anys Reimann link to feminist, queer, and decolonial discourses from a contemporary perspective. They are integrated into the collection tour as artistic interventions.

New on view is the large-scale textile work "Yellow Tree" (1998) by the artist and dancer Noa Eshkol (1924 in Kibbutz Degania Bet, Palestine; 2007 in Cholon, Israel). In juxtaposition with selected paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, the significance of the genre boundaries between art and music is negotiated and an artistic playing field of free forms of expression opens up. The dialogical presentation shows the polyphonic and global developments in the field of abstraction of the 20th century.