7.11.2024 — 23.2.2025
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ — Mensch
Exhibition at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Following the major Kollwitz exhibitions held in 2024 in Zurich, Bielefeld, Frankfurt and New York, amongst other cities, the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen is now presenting the first comprehensive Kollwitz retrospective in Denmark. Around 80 works from the Kollwitz Museum Köln are embarking on an international tour for this exhibition. Interest in the artist and her work is enormous, particularly at a time when Europe is increasingly divided and beset by crises.
Thu, 26.10.2023
FÜR MORGEN_standort_10:
A Performance by Finja Sander
With her performance »Für Morgen«, Berlin-based artist Finja Sander (*1996) invents a new form of collective remembrance: akin to a re-enactment, she translates Ernst Barlach’s memorial »Der Schwebende« – featuring the unmistakable facial features of Käthe Kollwitz – into her own physicality, thereby questioning both the culture of remembrance and the history of memorials.
A collaboration between the Kollwitz Museum Köln and the Friends of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and the Museum Ludwig e. V. to accompany »Encounters – Käthe Kollwitz as a Guest at the Wallraf«
18.8. — 26.11.2023
ENCOUNTERS — Käthe Kollwitz as a Guest at the Wallraf
Was Kollwitz inspired by Impressionism and Symbolism? The Wallraf focuses on three works that demonstrate the influence of Modernism on the artist’s early oeuvre. The exhibition juxtaposes two little-known oil studies, which Kollwitz created whilst studying in Munich, with paintings by Max Liebermann. Elsewhere, an etching created as part of the »Weaver« cycle is juxtaposed with works by Max Klinger and other Symbolists: encounters that shed new light on the young artist’s talent when viewed alongside her contemporaries.
6.6.2023 — 22.3.2024
TRANSIT — Chorweiler x Kollwitz
At the end of last year, the Kollwitz Museum showcased photographs by Damian Zimmermann, as well as graffiti, texts and music videos created at the Outline e.V. creative workshop, in its exhibition spaces. Following on from this successful and highly acclaimed exhibition, Kollwitz’s work is now being brought to Chorweiler as part of a collaborative outreach project – featuring a selection of reproductions chosen by the young people at the creative workshop, juxtaposed with Damian Zimmermann’s portraits.
18.5. — 10.9.2023
Käthe Kollwitz as a Guest in the Cologne Cathedral Treasury
Fear of loss, saying goodbye and death as artistic themes accompanied Kollwitz throughout many decades of her creative life. It is particularly in these works that she succeeds in expressing universal human experiences in a powerful way – to this day, viewers identify with her works and recognise themselves in them. The Cathedral Treasury is exhibiting ten of her drawings, prints and sculptures on the theme of farewell and death, for which the artist repeatedly drew on Christian iconography as a source of inspiration.
28.2. — 4.6.2023
Käthe Kollwitz as a Guest in the Museum Ludwig
The exhibition of more than 20 works at the Museum Ludwig juxtaposes a series of Kollwitz’s self-portraits from the 1920s and 1930s with photographs of the artist taken by Hugo Erfurth in 1925. The moving-image portrait of Kollwitz, filmed by Hans Cürlis in 1923, offers a glimpse over her shoulder during the creative process. The drawing produced during this session is one of 15 items on loan. Alongside the self-portraits, the exhibition focuses on the theme of home-based work – a subject that has been the focus of socio-political debates time and again since the late 19th century and continues to be so today.
31.1.2023 — 16.3.2024
RAUM FÜR NEUES — Discover our Pop-up Space
After nearly 40 years, the museum is temporarily closing its exhibition spaces for a complete refurbishment. Under the slogan EXPERIENCE KOLLWITZ!, the team, led by the new director Katharina Koselleck, is organising a pop-up exhibition. This will showcase the work being carried out behind the scenes during the closure: from a virtual studio of the artist, through analogue and digital background information on the life and work of Kollwitz, to interactive activities that allow visitors to explore her artistic techniques.
24.11. — 11.12.2022
TRANSIT — Chorweiler x Kollwitz
In the heart of Cologne’s Chorweiler district, at the Outline e.V. creative workshop, children, teenagers and young adults immerse themselves in hip-hop and graffiti culture. In this way, they make their voices heard, get involved and help shape their neighbourhood. The Kollwitz Museum Köln presents, in the multimedia installation TRANSIT – Chorweiler x Kollwitz, portrait photographs of the young people by Damian Zimmermann, as well as graffiti, texts and music videos that were created or originated in the creative workshop under the direction of Puya Bagheri.
1.7. — 13.11.2022
The new SIMPLICISSIMUS
Satire for the Bonn Republic
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the weekly magazine SIMPLICISSIMUS re-emerged in post-war Germany, offering critical commentary and amusing columns in words and pictures on the customs and bad habits, hopes and fears of the young Federal Republic. The Kollwitz Museum is now dedicating a special exhibition to the most famous satirical magazine of the Wirtschaftswunder-years, featuring front covers, drawings and lithographs from 1954 to 1967.
11.3. — 19.6.2022
Kollwitz Context –
The Œuvre behind the Masterpieces
The exhibition marking the publication of the new Kollwitz monograph and the farewell exhibition of Hannelore Fischer as director of the Kollwitz Museum Köln
1.10 2021 — 9.1.2022
Maria Lassnig
In the unsparing and at the same time humorous »body-awareness paintings« of Maria Lassnig (1919–2014), created apart from all stylistic and fashionable currents, the Austrian painter reflects upon herself and develops an artistic expression all her own, between abstraction and figuration. The Kollwitz Museum presents around seventy oil paintings and graphic works from the Klewan Collection, which illuminate almost all the phases of her creative life and make it possible to trace her path from outsider to one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.
19.8. — 26.9.2021
»The expression in his eyes – a brooding glance into the distance«
Käthe Kollwitz – Portraits in Focus
From Käthe Kollwitz’ extensive work, it is above all her self portraits that have become a firm part of collective memory. Her portraits of family members and contemporaries, by contrast, are far less well-known. These works include portraits of notable politicians, fellow artists, as well as depictions of unknown men and women, usually with a working-class background.
19. — 29.8.2021
Earth and Fire
JAN KOLLWITZ
Japanese Ceramics
Jan Kollwitz is among today’s most outstanding ceramic artists. For more than three decades this great-grandson of Käthe Kollwitz has been creating expressive ceramic vessels using traditional Japanese techniques – off the beaten track from artistic fashions and trends.
21.5. — 15.8.2021
Friedrich Seidenstücker
Life in the City
Friedrich Seidenstücker (1882–1966) is among the important chroniclers of everyday life in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic. His atmospheric photographs, mostly taken on his wanderings through the city, tell of seemingly incidental events and occurrences: of Sunday pleasures and the working day, of children's games in the street and the bustle at railway stations and the zoo. The Kollwitz Museum now presents 100 works from the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Bavarian State Painting Collections, Munich.
25.9.2020 — 16.5.2021
ART DÉCO
Graphic Design from Paris
Floral forms, geometric elements, high-contrast colours, clear and at the same time playful typography — the graphic design of Art Deco unites the seemingly contradictory. Artful posters, illustrations and advertisements reflect the themes of the age: advertising for haute couture or jazz, dance and technical achievements — not least for war and government bonds — transports the viewer into the illusion of a better and more beautiful world. The Kollwitz Museum presents more than 100 prints from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.
9.6. — 20.9.2020
»Loving and letting go ...«
Personal Moments in the Work of Käthe Kollwitz
In the artist's 75th memorial year, two exhibitions direct the gaze towards the personal aspects of the Kollwitz œuvre: towards the motifs of »love« and of farewell, of »having to let go«. Kollwitz works these different, indeed opposing, themes into works of emotional force, raising them to universal validity. In quotations from diaries and letters, we also encounter an attentive chronicler of her time — as well as the harshest critic of her own work.
