Wassily Kandinsky, Komposition IV, 1911, oil on canvas, 159,5 x 250,5 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf.
Exhibitions of Modern European Painting 1905-1915
Raphael Rosenberg (PI), Christina Bartosch, Nirmalie Muloli, Tanja Jenni
FWF project (January 2018 – January 2021)
The project aims to study the history of a crucial moment of modern European painting from the perspective of exhibitions or, more precisely, through the corresponding exhibition catalogues: the period from 1905 to 1915, a time of a particularly dense rise of avant-garde movements such as Fauvism (originated 1905 at the Salon d’Automne, Paris), Cubism, Futurism, Rayonism, Orphism, Suprematism (founded at the 1915 exhibition 0,10 in St. Petersburg). The core of the project is the creation of a database of exhibitions (by using the data from the corresponding catalogues) taking place in this period, where living European artists participated. We assume to include ca. 600 exhibitions with roughly 180.000 paintings and 2.000-3.000 artists. The database will be as exhaustive as possible and openly accessible on the internet. Within the time-frame the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data will serve to outline:
1. The geography and networks of modern painting: Where (in which cities and institutions), when, and with whom did artists exhibit?
2. The chronology and geography of exhibiting new forms and propagating “isms”: Which kinds of paintings were exhibited when and where?
3.The exhibiting strategies of modern painters: How did artists choose the works to present in which exhibitions? Did they pursue specific policies to make themselves publicly known?
The project will deliver a new and much broader ground for our knowledge and understanding of the history of European painting in the early 20th century. We venture to assert that it will change our understanding of Abstract Art and to some extent of the general phenomenon of Avant-gardes at the beginning of the 20th century.
