Phänomen Großmann trifft auf künstlerische Fotografie

Rescued from oblivion! Rudolf Großmann (1882–1941) was a renowned painter and graphic artist and, on account of his sharp pen, also a feared chronicler. In portraits and café and street scenes he traced life in the metropolis in all its facets; in the 1910s and 1920s he published texts and illustrations in magazines such as Simplicissimus, and he also illustrated books for authors including Joachim Ringelnatz and Erich Kästner. Today Rudolf Großmann is a familiar name only to enthusiasts and to specialists in the 1920s. Against the background of the question of why he has largely fallen into oblivion, the exhibition and the book juxtapose his work with photographic works by contemporary artists. His graphic and painted works from the collection of the Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg are combined with photographic positions from the collection of the Kunststiftung DZ BANK. Above all Rudolf Großmann’s portrait drawings, which possess a photographic gaze of their own, prove to be meaningful counterparts to works by Wolfgang Tillmans, Sven Johne, Nan Goldin or Gisèle Freund. Barbara Probst’s multi-perspectival gaze or Beate Gütschow’s spatial constructions moreover show, when they encounter Rudolf Großmann’s drawn scenes, that despite the leap of more than 100 years in time there is an enormous atmospheric affinity. Rudolf Großmann maintained a certain equidistance from the familiar styles of his day, which makes his work incomparable and at the same time establishes an affinity with photography. But that could not protect him either from persecution under National Socialism, so that his art too was branded degenerate and he withdrew increasingly to Freiburg, the town of his birth.

Exhibition:
Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg, 28/10/2022 – 19/2/2023