Allan KaprowMalerei 1946–1957 – Eine Werkschau

Allan Kaprow’s early paintings have never been on view before; her creator Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) enjoys worldwide fame above all as an action artist. Yet it is not only that the term happening goes back to him – he coined this art form in New York at the end of the 1950s; his environments too – huge, mutable installations made of car tyres, barrels or blocks of ice, for example – are regarded as landmarks of recent art history. Allan Kaprow did, however, begin his artistic career as a painter, not least in connection with his studies under Hans Hofmann; he also studied art history with Meyer Schapiro and composition with John Cage, and thus showed himself open at an early stage not only to theory but also to the most diverse artistic approaches and interpretations of the world. In doing so he always moved within the field of tension between intuition, open form and temporal reference on the one hand and reflexive practice as a theorist and art historian on the other. The exhibition at the Villa Merkel in Esslingen is the first to be devoted exclusively to the early paintings produced between 1946 and 1957, revealing the models on which the young artist oriented himself and against which he worked; particularly striking here are his interest in questions of space and his endeavour to short-circuit the achievements of a Jackson Pollock and a John Cage. This extends as far as the works produced in the mid-1950s that he called „action collages“ and into which he gradually incorporated everyday materials and objects. Exhibition and book present a great wealth of paintings by Allan Kaprow that have never been on view before.

Exhibition:
Villa Merkel Esslingen, 19/3–28/5/2017