Frans Masereel: Es gibt keine schönere Farbe als das Schwarz

On the 50th anniversary of Frans Masereel's death (3 January 2022)

It's a bit like meeting up with old acquaintances. The figures that the Belgian artist Frans Masereel (1889-1972) left us and the scenes and stories that his pictures tell us are inextricably linked to his fascination with the silent films of the 1920s, such as those of Sergei Eisenstein or the early Alfred Hitchcock. Although it is widely known that Masereel's pictures are still able to create a deep pull today, the prints and books are also worth a closer look beyond mere recognition. It was therefore an extraordinary stroke of luck that the Kunstmuseum Reutlingen was able to acquire a large collection of Masereel's works in 1989. The books with original woodcuts, woodcut sequences and single woodcuts from this museum collection are supplemented by numerous loans from private collections in the current exhibition and the accompanying book, both of which celebrate the 50th anniversary of the artist's death on 3 January 2022, thus offering a comprehensive retrospective of his complete oeuvre with almost 250 exhibits from the period from 1911 to 1971. Frans Masereel, one of the founding members of the international woodcutters' association XYLON in 1953 alongside HAP Grieshaber, Erich Heckel, Gerhard Marcks, Ewald Mataré, Otto Pankok, Max Pechstein and Karl Rössing, of which he was the first president, made a decisive contribution to the great popularity of art understood as political in a humanist sense in the 20th century with his narrative picture series. His work groups "Idea. Their Birth, Their Life, Their Death", "The City", "My Book of Hours" and "The Dead Speak", to name but a few.

Exhibition:
Reutlingen Art Museum, 16/12/2021 - 10/4/2022