Corinne Wasmuht

• Albertina Modern, Vienna (AT)
• 11.04.–14.09.2025

Jörg Immendorff's Café Deutschland, Georg Baselitz's Remix-paintings or Joseph Beuys's protest signs: The Viehof Collection is one of the most important private collections in Germany, whose focus is undoubtedly on the art of its own country, with a special focus on those artists who shaped the Rhineland and its art centers of Cologne and Düsseldorf as a nucleus of the avant-garde of international importance. 24 artist positions were selected for the major spring exhibition in order to present the development of German painting and sculpture after 1960.

The show presents an overview of the depth of this collection: from Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, who stand for the “cheeky”, socially critical art of the 1960s, to that of the 1980s, which was shaped by Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Katharina Sieverding, to the field of figurative and abstract art of the 21st century, which is represented by works by Neo Rauch, Daniel Richter, Isa Genzken and Katharina Grosse.

It is a show of contrasts that presents itself at the ALBERTINA MODERN: Sigmar Polke, Jörg Immendorff and Georg Baselitz are placed in a pathetically expansive setting with numerous large formats, next to the conceptual works of Joseph Beuys and Rosemarie Trockel, while a few rooms further on the works of Anne Imhof and Katharina Grosse speak a completely different language.

At the same time, the exhibition is a dialogical presentation conceived from loans from the Viehof Collection paired with works from the Albertina collections. It is intended to make the most essential works from the Rhineland collection accessible to a broad Austrian public and to show how excellently the two collections interlock. In this way, the museum's own collection will also be reexamined and the approaches it contains will become more legible and visible.