#9 Fritz Winter. documenta artist from the beginning. Lecture by Anna Rühl
Thursday, May 16, 2019, 6:30 pm
Venue: Fridericianum, Friedrichsplatz 18, 34117 Kassel
Admission free
Address of Welcome: Birgit Jooss, director of the documenta archiv
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Günther Becker: Exhibition view of the big painting hall at Museum Fridericianum with Fritz Winters „Komposition vor Blau und Gelb“ in the background, 1955, Inventory Number: docA, MS, d01, 10011709
The painter Fritz Winter (1905-1976) was present with a body of work at each of the first three documenta exhibitions. As a professor at the Werkakademie, he worked closely together with the founder of documenta, Arnold Bode (1900-1977), and became increasingly involved in the organizational structure of the exhibitions. Along with Bode and the art historian Werner Haftmann (1912-1999) Winter is one of the influential figures in the early history of documenta.
The starting point of this lecture by Anna Rühl is the programmatic staging of Winter’s work at the first documenta in 1955 as a showpiece of German post-war abstraction. With the monumental painting "Komposition in Blau und Gelb," the former Bauhaus student dominated the large painting hall in the Fridericianum and at the same time created the first site- and situation-specific artwork for documenta. Through photographs, documents, and press reviews, the resonance of Winter’s participation in multiple iterations of documenta will be reconstructed. As part of the lecture, there will be a screening of the short film "Fritz Winter" from 1961, a rare artistic document of the times.
The speaker is the curator of the Fritz Winter Foundation at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich. She is currently preparing an exhibition on Fritz Winter at the Neue Galerie in cooperation with the Museumlandschaft Hessen Kassel.