The exhibition “Sport, Fun & Games in the Würth Collection” looks at the phenomenon of leisure in all its facets. Kunsthalle Würth in Schwäbisch Hall is showing around 200 works by 98 artists, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Willi Baumeister, Philipp Bauknecht, Walter Wörn, Donna Stolz, Tomi Ungerer and Barry Flanagan.
Image above: Pierre Bonnard – Le port des yachts, Antibes, 1914, oil on canvas, 46 x 76 cm, Würth Collection, Inv. 18354, Acquired 2020, Photo: Archiv Würth
Les Loisirs (Leisure time) is the name of a new addition to the Würth Collection created by the French cubist Fernand Léger (1881-1955) in 1944. At a time in the middle of the war, he dedicated himself to the comparatively young phenomenon of leisure and its longing for peace, light-heartedness and idleness for all.
After the leaden months of 2020/21, the new collection exhibition at Kunsthalle Würth, inspired not least by this print by Fernand Léger, now also follows the pleasures (as well as the excessive demands) that leisure brings.
Leisure activities, whether in the form of sport or play, not only offer movement and inspiration, but are also important factors of artistic creativity as free spaces for thinking.
Idleness beyond fixed rules, distractions in carefree freedom, daydreams, drifting, strolling around, hanging out, chilling or even fooling around characterise our leisure behaviour and find expression in the most diverse artistic formulations.
Is the art world even the better playground in the end? On a light-footed course, the exhibition follows classic leisure topoi such as park, swimming pool, bathing lake, ring or arena to marina, racecourse or club. It is dedicated to play as a creative experience – from children’s play to parlour games.
Shows puppet and shadow theatre and finds the roots of today’s game and competition culture in the public games of antiquity, in which socially accepted competition sometimes led to death. She discusses why so many artists from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray or Max Ernst to Alfred Hrdlicka and François Morellet were as passionately devoted to the game of chess, which always had a touch of genius, as they were to boxing. Finally, it turns to the Ars ambulandi, the aesthetics of being on foot: it finds in walking the (artistic) access to the world that is thwarted by not walking, and offers visitors the opportunity to participate and exercise, for example in Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s WortSpielZeug or Jeppe Hein’s humorous (park) benches.
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Monday, 13 December 2021 – Sunday, 26 February 2023
WHERE?
Kunsthalle Würth
Lange Straße 35
74523 Schwäbisch Hall
You can reach Kunsthalle Würth via Stadtgrabenring, turn off Bahnhofstraße.
Parking is available in the city’s multi-storey car parks.
The closest car park in the city is for Kunsthalle Würth:
P 3 “Alte Brauerei”
Mauerstr. 18/1
74523 Schwäbisch Hall
WHEN?
daily 10 am – 6 pm
