"Minimal and Conceptual Art in Europe: The Helga and Walter Lauffs Collection" Exhibition
Zwirner & Wirth
This event has ended.
Zwirner & Wirth (32 East 69th Street) and David Zwirner (519 West 19th Street) will present a two-part exhibition that aims to provide a focused overview of the Minimal and Conceptual artistic practices that emerged in Europe in the 1960s and 70s.
The exhibition will comprise works from the collection of Helga and Walther Lauffs, one of Europe’s most important private collections of 20th century post-war art. Between 1968 and 1975, under the guidance of curator Paul Wember (who was known for the visionary program of contemporary art that he developed as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Museum and Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld), the Lauffs put together a broad selection of work that represents the nexus of European and American artistic sensibilities of the post-war era. While the collection as a whole encompasses work that ranges in scope (from
Assemblage, Pop art, Arte Povera, Minimalism, to Post-Minimalism, Process, and Conceptual art), this exhibition will focus on works that exemplify a specifically European perspective on Minimal and Conceptual movements of the 1960s and 70s, offering a selection of works that have rarely been shown outside of Germany, where they were on long-term loan at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld.
At Zwirner & Wirth, the exhibition will feature influential European pioneers of the European post-war avant-garde, including Yves Klein, whose monochromes and performance-based works play a critical role in the development of Minimalism and Conceptual art. His 1961 Cosmogonie sans titre (COS 26), a monochrome made by holding a painted surface up to the falling rain, and Peinture de feu sans titre (F 92), a “fire painting” which shows a sequence of burn marks, the traces of the open flames of Klein’s spectacular outdoor Fire Wall installation at his 1961 retrospective at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, will be on view. Also included will be important works by other artists who radically altered and questioned conceptions of painting and art-making in general. Among these is a folded and puckered white Achrome canvas from 1959 by Piero Manzoni, and Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, 1962 (illustrated above left), which presents a
monochromatic painting perforated with holes, adding new dimension to
the work while calling into question its support and spatial surroundings.
Similarly, Ragazza in minigonna/Ragazza seduta per terra, 1962-1967, a mirrored painting by Michelangelo Pistoletto, extends the work of art beyond the picture plane with its reflective surface. Other significant works on view at Zwirner & Wirth include Giulio Paolini’s Idem V, 1975 (illustrated at right), a gridded, sequential installation of forty framed rectangular pieces of cardboard, each
painted with tempera in the varying colors of the spectrum and inscribed with a geometric shape, thereby visually deconstructing the elemental components and operations of painting.
Media
Schedule
from November 05, 2008 to December 23, 2008
Opening Reception on 2008-11-11 from 17:00 to 19:00