Design Plakat Ausstellung Barlach - Kollwitz im Nationalmuseum Kiew

Barlach abroad

Along with Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach is one of the most internationally renowned German artists of the early 20th century. His sculptures, drawings and graphics are represented in collections and museums worldwide. He addressed the existential questions of modernity in images of man. These images of man are universally understandable. A cosmos of human emotional states manifests itself in this unaffected, unpretentious and unimagined repertoire of figures. Barlach's art addresses its audience in an immediate way, not only in Europe, but especially in cultures that have always been skeptical of European modernism. "What man has suffered and can endure, his greatness, his concerns including myth and utopia, that is what concerns me." With statements like this one from 1911, Barlach represents an honest offer for a dialogue at eye level, for a process of understanding across cultural and political boundaries. The same is true for Kollwitz, who, however, depicts the precarious living conditions at the time of industrialization more realistically and from a female perspective. Against this background, it is not surprising that since the 1990s the Ernst Barlach Gesellschaft has not only been able to present numerous exhibitions featuring Barlach or Barlach-Kollwitz in European museums such as Antwerp, Rome, Athens, Copenhagen, Oslo, Venice, Zagreb, but has also increasingly received requests for cooperation from museums and cultural institutes outside Europe. The exhibition "Ernst Barlach - Sculptor of the Modern Age" initiated a Turkey-wide Barlach reception in 2006/07. It took place in Istanbul, Ankara, and eight other cities in Anatolia. In 2008/09, "Ernst Barlach - Käthe Kollwitz: On the Borders of Existence" was the first German exhibition project at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art since the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

  • Men load boxes of art into a truck in front of the Museum of Modern Art Tehran

    Art transport in front of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art

  • Visitor in front of the historical chronology in the exhibition Barlach Kollwitz Tehran

    Historical chronology in the exhibition Barlach-Kollwitz, Tehran

  • Three Iranian men in front of Barlach's figure "The Beggar"

    Directorss of Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in front of Ernst Barlachs figure "The Beggar"

  • Sculpture hanging in an church

    Ernst Barlach - Bildhauer der Moderne, Istanbul 2006

  • Exhibition view Ernst Barlach in Istanbul

    Ernst Barlach - Bildhauer der Moderne, Istanbul 2006

  • Exhibition view Ernst Barlach Ankara

    Ernst Barlach - Bildhauer der Moderne, Ankara 2006

Even if art cannot prevent wars, it can make an attempt to promote peace and understanding. The FaceArt-FaceFuture project in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia was realized in 2017/18 with this intention. Barlach-Kollwitz were exhibited in the National Museum Minsk, Kiev and the Russian Museum St. Petersburg with a total of 260 works. But they were not alone in their message of peace. The Ernst Barlach Society had invited video and performance artists from Hamburg and the three venues to work out an interactive mediation program for pupils and students in a four-day conference in Minsk. In total, not only 45 thousand people visited the exhibitions in the museums, but 64 young exhibition ambassadors transformed the themes of Barlach and Kollwitz into artistic film and performance projects and presented them in the museums and local off-spaces. More than 2000 young people participated in their programs, the touching and engaging presentations and discussions.

Most of the projects were realized with the support of and in cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office and the embassies of the Federal Republic of Germany. The cooperation with the respective cultural institutes, the numerous NGOs and the artists was always connected with great hopes for sustainable networks, the consolidation of the cross-border dialogue and future cooperation.