When we think of Pop Art, we think of New York or LA, but Cologne? The city in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) is home to the Ludwig Museum and the largest collection of American Pop Art outside of the USA. Just one example of how of American and North-Rhine Westphalian art movements have inspired each other.
The Ludwig Museum in Cologne includes the most comprehensive collection of American Pop Art outside the USA. The city has always been a home to the arts, and its reputation as a cornerstone of progressive art solidified in 1946, when a collection of German Expressionist art was given to the city. It included works that many thought were lost during the Nazi period, when they had been considered “degenerate.” The exhibition caught the attention of one young Cologne resident: Peter Ludwig.
Fast forward 20 years, and Peter and his wife Irene became leading art collectors, very much taken with a new movement of art – Pop Art (at the time unknown in Germany, but no less revolutionary). Their collection would grow to include works by many prominent American artists, such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist. They eventually donated these works to create the Ludwig Museum, which was founded in 1976. The museum opened an intimate window to German audiences onto this exciting and versatile art movement.
It is perhaps no accident that collector Ludwig, after his experience as a young student standing before German Expressionist works, was attracted to American Pop Art. Art historians point out that Pop artists borrowed the exaggerated and simplified lines, and vibrant, contrasting colors from their German counterparts.
Link to: www.museum-ludwig.de/en
As the global art market grew in the 1960s and 70s, a European Pop Art group emerged as well, which included Sigmar Polke and other Cologne-based painters at the time.
Polke expanded upon the ideas of Pop Art from the USA, also using unique materials, techniques and motifs taken from consumer culture. Polke’s early works used comic-influenced dots, similar to Roy Lichtenstein. However, the German Pop artists expanded their work to move away from mere irony, and to create works that were critical of the German “Wirtschaftswunder” (post-war “economic miracle”) and the new, emerging consumer culture.
It was certainly not the only time American and German, particularly North-Rhine Westphalian, art movements inspired each other.
Düsseldorf, north of Cologne on the Rhine River, may be smaller in size, but its impact is at least equal in the art world, particularly in light of its ties to American art movements and vice versa. Much of the region’s artistic renown came from the prestigious Düsseldorf Academy (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf).
In the mid-19th century, young American artists flocked to Düsseldorf to study with members of a landscape painting movement at the academy. Steeped in German Romanticism, it advocated a “plein air” style of a painting, but with a very subdued color palette, and strong linear drawing technique.
It was in Düsseldorf that American painters such as George Caleb Bingham and the German-American painter Albert Bierstadt refined their style to create the sweeping landscapes of The Hudson River School. Works by the Düsseldorf landscape painting school – both by Americans and Germans – can be viewed in the permanent collections of the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.
Link to: www.kunstakademie-duesseldorf.de
Link to: www.kunstpalast.de/en
