The triptych as an altarpiece or devotional image played a pivotal role in Western art since the Middle Ages. This religiously motivated artistic tradition came to a halt with Rubens and was first readopted at the close of the 19th century, producing radically new images and focusing on novel, drastic subject matter. Taking up the Christian motif of suffering, many significant artists in modern times make existential statements on humanity. Otto Dix, Max Beckmann or Markus Lüpertz conceive modern myths and express political viewpoints. Others, such as Jannis Kounellis, Dieter Roth or Ellsworth Kelly, ennoble materials, color and form by means of the triptych. The special exhibition »Three. The Triptych in Modern Art« exemplarily shows the transformation of this type of image, its impact and current relevance, and investigates also the demarcation between it and the image series or sequence. to catalogue
	With Adolf Hölzel a new chapter in modern painting commenced. The artist, who was born in Olmütz (Moravia) in 1853 and died in 1934, moved to Stuttgart in 1905, where he struck an independent path to the modern picture. Artistically, he was less interested in achieving the totally non-representational than in ensuring that the actual nature of the picture amounted to a »surface covered with color« (Maurice Denis). Hölzel’s efforts here paralleled the strivings of others throughout Europe, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Robert Delaunay. His new pictures recall a kaleidoscope in which the artist let the variety of colors and forms in the picture form a unity. Hölzel’s ideas on art—transmitted by the master’s students Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus as well as Willi Baumeister—became the theoretical basis of modernism for future generations. On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Adolf Hölzel’s death, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, which houses the most important Hölzel collection worldwide, illuminates the meaning of his work for the art of our epoch on 1,000 square meters in the exhibition »KALEIDOSCOPE. HOELZEL within the Avant-Garde« . Representing this pioneer of the European avant-garde will be 220 works, some on view for the first time, including landscape and figurative pictures from Dachau, pastels, stained glass, Hölzel’s famous red series and works on paper as well as exponents of his art theoretical works from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Sponsored by to catalogue
	For three years duration, Ben Willikens studied Leonardo da Vinci’s »Last Supper« in the former Dominican Monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. In 1979 he completed this artistic dialogue, which was documented in numerous conceptual drawings and a monumental panel painting. After a period of almost 30 years, the panel painting will be exhibited in Stuttgart for the very first time. Discarding the Apostles and the figure of Christ or further narrative elements, the artist has reduced the biblical scene to the essential architectural distribution of light and space; the art-historical model has been compressed in order to unveil its relevance for contemporary times. Furthermore, the Kunstmuseum will present the complete series »ORTE« in the exhibition. In these works Willikens addresses existing architectural monuments built in the 1930s, including buildings in Nuremberg, Berlin, and Munich, to symbolize the omnipotence of the NS dictatorship. However, devoid of all insignia of power, they reveal their fatal countenance: Darkness dominates the work, and behind it death and destruction inevitably lurk. The series was executed between 1996 and 1999, including ten canvases and fifteen gouaches. It was purchased by the »Daimler Art Collection« as a permanent loan for the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Sponsored by to catalogue
	Heinz Teufel, the famous gallery owner and collector, died in 2007. He was a great patron of Concrete Art in Germany. From opening his first gallery in 1966 in Koblenz up to his 1998 activities in Berlin he consequently pursued a stringent gallery profile - independent of the fluctuating fashions of the art world. Including works by 46 internationally renowned artists, the collection of Concrete Art he put together within this period is in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart as a permanent loan since 2004. This assortment of art, including 200 paintings, numerous sculptures, and an extensive stock of prints, gives an exemplary pan-European overview of Concrete Art since the Second World War. The inclusion of Eastern European as well as Italian and French manifestations of the abstractionist movement is an outstanding feature of the collection and rarely to be found in museums. In the collection artists such as Aurelie Nemours, Zdenek Sýkora, Antonio Calderara, as well as the »Swiss classics«, such as Max Bill and Richard Paul Lohse are represented by outstanding works. The complete catalog of the Heinz and Anette Teufel Collection is being published especially for the comprehensive presentation of the collection. to catalogue
	The photographs of Elger Esser act like a déjà vu: his magic pictures of riverscapes, bridges, villages, and seacoasts awaken vague memories, even if we have never visited any of the places photographed. Consciously drawing on Marcel Proust, the Stuttgart-born artist (b. 1967) repeatedly sets out in »search of lost time« in his poetic, melancholic photographs. Esser also defies forgetting in his choice of photographic techniques: he presents his most recently produced heliogravures, an almost forgotten technique from the nineteenth century, for the first time at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and subsequently at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem. This first large survey exhibition will also present around fifty large-format works by the artist. Additionally an approach to his works is offered by landscape-paintings from the 19th century as well as early photographs of the Herzog collection. As one of the last and youngest graduates of the famous class of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts Elger Esser is one of the most important German photographers today. to catalogue