The Penzberger Museum not only has works by Heinrich Campendonk.
77 works by the painter Gerhard Fietz are also part of the inventory.
The museum is now dedicating an exhibition to him.
Penzberg
- "Gerhard Fietz: Forms of Inner Freedom" is the name of the new show that starts this Saturday in the "Museum Penzberg - Campendonk Collection" as a 2G exhibition. It spans an arc from early work, in which figurative objects can still be seen, through works in which the artist is looking for new paths, to abstract works in which he experiments with shapes and sometimes uses bright colors. Fietz did not give a name to most of his pictures. The year must suffice. The pictures should speak for themselves.
Fietz lived from 1910 to 1997. He once studied with greats like Alexander Kanoldt, Oskar Schlemmer and Heinrich Nauen, from whom he soon broke away.
After the Second World War, which he experienced as a soldier in Russia, Fietz belonged in 1949 - at that time he was living in Icking near Wolfratshausen - to the small group of avant-garde abstract painters who founded the artist group "ZEN 49" in Munich.
He died in 1997 in Bleckede, Lower Saxony, east of Lüneburg.
Penzberger Museum donates 77 works to patrons
In 2010 there was already a retrospective in the Penzberg Museum, then called the “City Museum”, for Fietz's 100th birthday - apparently with long-term consequences. In March 2014, the then museum director Gisela Geiger announced that a patron was leaving a collection of 77 works by the abstract painter to the museum on permanent loan. At that time, the pictures could not be shown in an exhibition in Penzberg - the museum was about to be renovated and expanded.
The exhibition "ZEN, ZERO & Co - abstract since 1949" gave a first impression in 2019/2020.
She devoted herself to the great artists of abstraction in the period after the Second World War, including Fietz.
"Now let's go into detail and take a look at our protagonists from that time," says museum director Freia Oliv, who is curating the new exhibition together with Carolin Koch.
In the exhibition “Gerhard Fietz: Forms of Inner Freedom”, almost 100 pictures and objects by Fietz can be seen, including ceramic bowls, painted stones and wooden masks that are reminiscent of African models.
Even his camera, a sketchbook and a war diary are on display in showcases, in which Fietz has noted that he has just received his vaccination against cholera - as fittingly.
Pictures can be seen until the end of February
A dozen other pictures in the exhibition are from his teachers Kanoldt, Schlemmer and Nauen as well as his artist friend Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The comparison shows the similarities, but above all how Fietz went his own way, which is drawn from room to room in the exhibition, from self-portraits to drawings from the war, from landscapes that still seem a little expressionistic to abstract pictures .
The pictures, which will be shown until the end of February, are partly on permanent loan from the Ingeborg and Dr. Thomas Lensch Foundation. According to the museum, support also came from the artist's community of heirs, the Sparkassenstiftung Lüneburg, from private collections and from museums such as the Buchheim Museum in Bernried and the State Collection of Graphics in Munich. To go with the exhibition, Oliv has published a book for the museum, written by Maike Bruhns. It includes Fietz 'correspondence with colleagues, art historians and students, entitled "Art as a Discovery of the Self".
Exhibition with 2G
The new exhibition in the “Museum Penzberg” runs from November 20th to February 27th.
It is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
2G (vaccinated or recovered) and a mask requirement currently apply to the visit.
Registration is currently not required.
However, the rules can change depending on government regulations.
The museum asks you to find out more at www.museum-penzberg.de.
This also applies to guided tours and events in the accompanying program.
