Sprengel Museum. Which Modernism?

In 1937, during the World's Fair in Paris, the exhibition "Les Maîtres Populaires de la Réalité" ("The Popular Masters of Reality") featured, among others, artists such as André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Séraphine Louis, and Henri Rousseau.

Although these artists never saw themselves as a coherent group, their works constituted a popular counter-movement to other styles, such as "Classical Modernism", with whose exponents they were in close contact. However, these artists are still considered "naïve", "modern primitives" or "outsider artists".

With around 100 works from the private collections of the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (Gunzenhauser Collection), the Sprengel Museum Hannover (Sprengel Collection), the Zander Collection as well as (inter)national loans, the exhibition highlights and reveals relationships, links, differences and similarities with famous figures of "Classical Modernism" or Surrealism. The selected works offer a new perspective on Modern art, its history and developments.

Curators: Reinhard Spieler, Manja Wilkens

On the cover: Camille Bombois, Untitled, 1935, (detail)
Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm
Courtesy Sammlung Zander, Cologne
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023

Source: Show On Show