Koen Vermeule
Fensterbilder
11.06. – 29.08.2021

What is the significance of the exhibition’s title?

Koen Vermeule pays homage to Oskar Schlemmer in his new catalog “Fensterbilder”:
“When I travel, there are three artists I always take with me: Seurat, Spilliaert and Schlemmer. Their work is very close to me, it feels like a family. But there is something about Oskar Schlemmer that goes beyond his work and has influenced me. He showed me that as an artist you can reinvent yourself in times of great despair, without resources and deprived of your family. Schlemmer was declared a “degenerate artist” by the Nazis in 1937 and banned from working. Pushed aside. He was dismissed from the art academy in Berlin and his retrospective in Stuttgart was dismantled shortly after it opened. Through an art collector friend, he got a job at the “Herberts” paint factory in Wuppertal. In the summer of 1942, he secretly painted 18 small works on paper in a Wuppertal attic: the opposite side of the street, as seen from his window. The subjects are inconsequential, but perhaps that is what makes them so extraordinary. The neighbor’s dinner, a woman ironing and hanging up laundry. He rediscovered working from reality, called the series “window pictures” and even described one of them as the purest representation of himself. The window pictures are Oskar Schlemmer’s “last word”. The series is impressive, beautiful, intimate. An ode to looking. Due to the pandemic with its lockdowns and isolation, everyone is experiencing a greater distance from the world, and I have often thought of Schlemmer’s work. Looking at the world from a distance. I feel a connection to Schlemmer. His postcard-sized works, which were created in the attic in Wuppertal, have had a profound influence on my perspective.”

Curated by Thomas Trümper.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Berlin.