Albertinum: Focus Albertinum: Surreal. Gemälde von Hans Grundig, Heinz Lohmar und Richard Oelze

Hans Grundig, Das Tausendjährige Reich (Triptychon), 1935-38

Focus Albertinum: Surreal. Surreal Paintings by Hans Grundig, Heinz Lohmar, and Richard Oelze

Accompanying the opening exhibition at the Archiv der Avantgarden “Archive of Dreams,” a small selection of paintings is presented at the Albertinum, revealing surrealistic visual worlds of various facets. The works from the Albertinum‘s collection demonstrate that surrealist artistry, as an artistic attitude, extends far beyond a narrow art historical classification: Such an approach transcends dream or fantasy imagery, for instance, when figurative and realistic artists translate an unfelt, barely tangible reality into exaggerated or alienated visual metaphors.

Exhibition Site Albertinum

DATES 01/05/2024—07/07/2024

Opening Hours daily 10—18, Montag closed 20/05/2024 10—18 (Pfingstmontag)

Admission Fees normal 12 €, reduced 9 €, under 17 free, groups (10 persons and more) 11 €

Hans Grundig (1901 – 1958) was fascinated by the magical-meta-physical visual discoveries of Giorgio de Chirico in the mid-1920s, yet he found his own solutions to address “social tensions in the Weimar Republic” (Lea Grundig), as seen in his 1928 painting “Thunderstorm,” depicting both darkened and lightning-lit deser-ted cityscapes. In his triptych “The Thousand-Year Reich,” a major work of anti-fascist art, he finds metaphors beyond the real for political indoctrination and the “madness” on the streets during the street battles and the rise of the NSDAP in the 1930s.

Heinz Lohmar (1900 – 1976), who later became a protagonist of the so-called Socialist Realism after 1949 and a teacher of Gerhard Richter, encountered the works of renowned French Surrealist artists during his emigration to Paris in 1933. His composition “Farewell to Paris” from 1947 closely relates to these works, addressing the relationship between art and reality. The overlaid and merged animal and mythological figures in Lohmar‘s “Übertier” from 1936, can be interpreted as a critique of the times consi-dering his left-wing political engagement and his escape, but also indicate that Lohmar had studied the works of Max Ernst.

**Heinz Lohmar, Das Übertier, 1936** Öl auf Leinwand auf Sperrholz, 59 x 54,5 cm

Richard Oelze (1900 – 1981), trained at the Bauhaus and based in Dresden from 1926 to 1929, consistently developed his own surrealist style, which earned him international recognition as one of the main representatives of a German manifestation of Surrealism. Between 1932 and 1936, he met André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Paul Éluard, and Max Ernst in Paris. His motifs formed from numerous merged physiognomies, here for example a cabinet with an opening drawer, were described as delusional images and “dream painting”, with Dalí calling him the “only true surrealist.”

Focus Albertinum: Surreal. Surreal Paintings by Hans Grundig, Heinz Lohmar, and Richard Oelze

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