With around 130 exhibits by over 100 artists from Europe and the USA, the extensive exhibition HERAUSRAGEND! takes a look at the art form of relief and shows its development from 1800 to the 1960s. As a mixture of sculpture and painting, space and surface, the relief challenges our vision. Its very existence in the in-between has always made it a field for experimentation. High-ranking loans from the art museums of Basel and The Hague, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, among others, allow us to experience the impressive diversity and innovative power of the relief.
Fig. above: Hans Arp (1886-1966) Egg board, 1922, painted wood relief, 76.2 x 96.5 cm, © Private collection, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
While classicist sculptors such as Bertel Thorvaldsen took their cue from works of antiquity, in the 19th century artists such as Auguste Rodin and Medardo Rosso broke the mould of sculpture. Painter-sculptors such as Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso or Henri Matisse questioned the handling of form and colour anew in relief. In the 20th century, new techniques spurred the change, with Dadaists such as Kurt Schwitters or Hans Arp developing relief collages from everyday objects and materials such as wood, paper or plastics. Artists of the Russian avant-garde, the Bauhaus or Constructivist art – including Willi Baumeister, Oskar Schlemmer and Sophie Taeuber Arp – also aimed to shape a new world and society with their works. Since the 1950s, artists such as Jan Schoonhoven, Piero Manzoni or Karl Hartung have explored the surface of the work as a structure and artists such as Louise Nevelson or Lee Bontecou have conquered their place in art history with expansive material objects.
With the first exhibition on relief in around 40 years, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is shedding light on a still too little-known art form that appeals equally to the senses of sight and touch and is more significant than ever in these times of flat screens and distance maintenance.
WHERE?
Hamburg Art Gallery
Glockengießerwall 5
20095 Hamburg
WHEN?
Opening: Thursday, 12.10.2023, 7:00 p.m.
Tuesday, Wednesday, 10:00-18:00 hrs
Thursday, 10:00-21:00
Friday-Sunday, 10:00-18:00 hrs
Monday closed
