News is coming!: About rediscovered, donations and purchases

The Museum Ulm now offers a new insight into its versatile and extensive graphic collection with important works from Hans Arp to Albrecht Dürer and Pablo Picasso to Januarius Zick.

The graphic collection of the Museum Ulm comprises a total of around 25,000 works. After the modern collection of paintings created by the founding director, Julius Baum, had been almost completely dissolved in the course of the National Socialist “Degenerate Art” campaign, the museum directors of the post-war period attempted to compensate for this loss. Within the framework of financial possibilities, the focus of the collection was henceforth shifted from paintings to graphic art.

The important graphic arts collection contains prints from the 14th to the 19th century, but above all it offers an overview of the main currents and formative artists personalities of the 20th century, from French graphic art of the late 19th and 20th centuries to a comprehensive group of works by Pablo Picasso and representatives of German Expressionism, the Blauer Reiter, the Brücke, the Bauhaus as well as the period after 1945 and the present.

With the cabinet exhibition “News is coming!”, the museum is now dedicating a showcase to its graphics department, which offers an insight into the graphic wealth of the museum collection. The richness and breadth of the graphic art is the result of the collection strategy, which aims to continually expand and supplement the graphic art holdings through acquisitions, donations and permanent loans.

The selection on display in the graphic arts exhibition reflects a cross-section of formative artistic personalities and important graphic works from the 16th century to the modern age. Masterpieces by Hans Baldung, Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer are on display. Works of German and French graphic art from the 19th and 20th centuries are on display, including drawings and lithographs by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Max Liebermann, Marcelle Cahn and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as several works by Hans Arp and a colourful linocut series by Pablo Picasso that has not yet been shown. There are also new acquisitions and donations of contemporary works by Claes Oldenburg, Franz Burkhardt, Anne-Karin Furunes and Thomas Müller, among others. .

Due to the sensitivity of works on paper, they can only be exhibited temporarily. For this reason, you can look forward to new and rediscovered works from the graphic arts collection that are rarely or never shown – a treasure hunt, the results of which can now be seen in the exhibition “News is coming!” until spring 2020.