Exhi­bi­tion at the Wald­frieden Sculp­ture Park

Around 160 of these pan­els now form the cen­tre­piece of the exhi­bi­tion ‘Col­or, Col­or!’ at the Wald­frieden Sculp­ture Park. On the grounds of the for­mer vil­la of the paint man­u­fac­tur­er Kurt Her­berts, the works thus return to the Wup­per­tal set­ting in which they were cre­at­ed, at the inter­sec­tion of art, research and exper­i­men­ta­tion.

The pan­els on dis­play here fea­ture tech­niques such as drip­ping, flow­ing, and shap­ing with fin­gers, tools or oth­er mate­ri­als such as sand. These var­nish exper­i­ments strad­dle the bound­ary between mate­r­i­al exper­i­men­ta­tion and art, and are now regard­ed as the almost for­got­ten pre­cur­sors of Art Informel.

The sur­viv­ing lac­quer works of the Wup­per­tal work­ing group were acquired in the 2000s by the Friends of the Kun­st­mu­se­um Stuttgart and added to the museum’s col­lec­tion. From these hold­ings, the Wald­frieden Sculp­ture Park in Wup­per­tal is exhibit­ing around 160 lac­quer pan­els in the park’s low­er exhi­bi­tion hall. They are accom­pa­nied by Oskar Schlemmer’s ‘Lac­quer Cab­i­net’, which the artist con­ceived in 1941: thanks to the posthu­mous recon­struc­tion and real­i­sa­tion of his plans, it is acces­si­ble to vis­i­tors in the exhi­bi­tion and can be expe­ri­enced spa­tial­ly.