New Gallery Graz

Show with old and new highlights from the collection

Curator Günter Holler-Schuster between works by Yves Klein and Alex Katz(Bild: Universalmuseum Joanneum/J.J. Kucek)

The Neue Galerie in Graz is presenting "Show!", a new exhibition with around 350 highlights from the museum's collection. Thanks to the renowned donations of recent years, there is also a lot of new things to discover. The result is a tour through the history of art over the past 200 years that is well worth seeing.

According to curator Günter Holler-Schuster, it was an "intense desire of the public" to see the highlights of the Neue Galerie collection in Graz once again in an exhibition. This wish has now been fulfilled with the exhibition entitled "Show! And it has it all. In addition to the museum's classics - from Schiele, Klimt, Waldmüller and Boeckl to Bresslern-Roth, Brus and Hollegha - which have long been part of the collection, many exciting works have been added in recent years: The donations from Helmut Suschnigg and Regina Ploner, for example, included iconic works from Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein to Alex Katz and Yves Klein. Artists such as Maria Lassnig also donated important works to the museum as part of personal donations.

"Networked overall narrative"
However, the selection and hanging that Holler-Schuster has undertaken results in far more than just a "show of delicacies" from the period between 1800 and today, to which the Neue Galerie is dedicated. In the exhibition, he cultivates a "networked overall narrative", as he calls it, and takes up important motifs from art history (landscape, still life, portrait, nude) and shows their development over the years.

Some highlights of the collection: Egon Schiele, City End, 1917, oil on canvas(Bild: Universalmuseum Joanneum/ N. Lackner)

Herbert Boeckl, Erzberg, 1942, oil on canvas(Bild: Universalmuseum Joanneum/ N. Lackner)

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth, Cattle Egret on Elephants, 1934, oil on jute(Bild: Universalmuseum Joanneum/N. Lackner)

Günter Brus, Tear test, 1970 Color photograph on cardboard(Bild: Neue Galerie Graz/UMJ)

Marie Egner, Poppy field in bloom in Styria, around 1888(Bild: Universalmuseum Joanneum/N. Lackner)

The show begins with Biedermeier landscape paintings: "In their charming beauty, they also contributed to the establishment of tourism. That is why we are juxtaposing them with contemporary works that address the effects of mass tourism," explains Holler-Schuster.

Exciting frictions
This form of critical juxtaposition leads to many exciting frictions: For example, Wilhelm Thöny's famous city views of New York in the 1930s are juxtaposed with Tony Oursler's video work on the terrorist attack of 9/11. Or the many images of Orientalism, which take a clichéd view of the distance, are countered by the works of Liu Xiaodong, who traveled through Eisenerz from a similar perspective.

Exhibition view with Herbert Brandl's "Orange Hyenas" (2017, pictured far right)(Bild: Universalmuseum Joanneum/J.J. Kucek)

The development of nude painting is also a focal point of the show: from the idealization of the human body - for example by Klimt, whose collection includes a preliminary study for the "Portrait of Miss Liesser", which is currently in the headlines - to Schiele, for whom the body becomes an expression of inner trauma, to Günter Brus, for whom the body itself becomes a canvas, an artistic event.

The result is an exciting tour through the art of the past 200 years, which not only shows the richness and diversity of the Neue Galerie's collection, but also draws many exciting cross-references and thus makes breaks and continuities in art history visible. On view until August 18.