75 years of Kunsthalle Recklinghausen. The Beginnings: Radical Innovations

15 December 2024 – 6 April 2025

Vernissage: 14 December, 5 p.m. 
Symposium: 23 and 24 January 2025, 
Finissage-Weekend: 5 and 6 April 2025

The Kunsthalle Recklinghausen begins its 75th anniversary with an extraordinary exhibition: based on archive material from the 1950s, some of which has never been seen before, it becomes clear that even before the first documenta, innovative and radically new exhibition concepts were staged here that have been forgotten today. Through co-operations and loans from all over the world, from Amsterdam, India and Japan to exchanges with Venice, the Ruhr region and, above all, the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen were the driving force behind a new art and display culture in the 1950s. Some of the most remarkable exhibition stagings have now been recreated for the first time for The Beginnings: Radical Innovations
and will be shown in Recklinghausen from December 2024 with loans from all over Europe.

Almost 75 years ago, in May 1950, the municipal museum Kunsthalle Recklinghausen opened, initiated by Franz Große-Perdekamp and Thomas Grochowiak, who declared the old high-rise bunker from the days of the Second World War an art gallery and henceforth transformed it into an exhibition venue for international art. Not only has the Ruhrfestspiele exhibition found a permanent presentation venue here, but the junger westen art prize, the oldest art prize in Germany since 1945, has also been shown in the Kunsthalle on a recurring basis alongside a changing programme.

Radical innovations were not only to be found on the canvases of post-war artists, but also took place in the exhibition space. From the figurative to the non-objective, from the wall to the room. As part of the first exhibition to ring in the anniversary year, works by junger westen and its friends will be presented in some of the exhibition displays from the 1950s. Innovative exhibition designs that incorporate textiles, challenge the presentation in the white cube and utilise the space as a playing field. The show unites three important aspects of the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen's first decade. It presents the artists' group junger westen and, closely associated with it, participants in the art prize of the same name as the foundation stone for its own collection. In their materiality, the exhibition displays refer to a reorientation of the forms of presentation that supported the reorganisation of Western-oriented art. Finally, the show is dedicated to rediscovered positions of female artists who were already guests at the Kunsthalle in the 1950s in travelling exhibitions such as Réalités Nouvelles, Nouvelles Réalités, 1958 or Vitalita nell'Arte, 1959. Their practice shed new light on the male-dominated canon of non-objective and informal art and at the same time called for the long overdue inclusion of these women artists in the canon of post-war art history

With works by:
Sandra Blow, Hal Busse, Lynne Chadwick, Emil Cimiotti, Jeanne Coppel, Gustav Deppe, Natalia Dumitresco, Claire Falkenstein, Thomas Grochowiak, Hella Guth, Otto Herbert Hajek, Ernst Hermanns, Frieda Hunziker, Emil Kiess, Sigrid Kopfermann, Jaap Mooy, Alicia Penalba, Marie Raymonds, Marie-Louise von Rogister, Emil Schumacher, Heinrich Siepmann, Hans Uhlmann, Hans Werdehausen 

The exhibition brings together the results of the Forschungsvolontariate NRW sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the reappraisal of the exhibition and collection history of the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen from 1950 to 1959 in cooperation with the Chair of Art History Prof. Dr Christian Spies at the University of Cologne.

Opening Hours
Tickets
* Pupils, Apprentices, Students, Groups from 10 persons, Owners of the Recklinghausen Pass i.e. any other equivalent identification card from other municipalites, Owners of the Ehrenamtskarte NRW or the Jubiläums-Ehrenamtskarte NRW
The Kunsthalle is barrier-free accesible.
Guided Tours
The public guided tours are free of charge, only the entrance fee needs to be paid.

Per group (20 persons max.) a booked guided tour is 55,- Euro. Registration via tel. (02361) 50 19 35.
Address
Approach
The Kunsthalle is located across the central station, close to the bus station and is accessible via all public transportations. An underground park station is located underneath the bus station.