Prints and Drawings

With around 25,000 works, the Museum Ulm has an outstanding graphics collection. Since the post-war era, graphic arts have been a focal point in the museum’s collecting strategy. At that time, the post-war directors tried to compensate within the bounds of their financial possibilities for the fact that the modern gallery that founding director Julius Baum had built up from the mid-1920s was destroyed in the course of the National Socialist degenerate art campaign. Thus the focus of the collection shifted in the field of modern art from paintings to graphics from the 1950s onwards.

Today, the graphic collection offers an overview of the most formative artists and essential currents of the 20th century. The selection ranges from French graphics of the late 19th and 20th centuries to a comprehensive group of works by Picasso, over representatives of German Expressionism, of “Der Blaue Reiter”, of “Die Brücke” and the “Bauhaus” to the period after 1945. Due to the high sensitivity of the works, they can only be shown temporarily, usually as part of thematic special exhibitions.