Falling Stars: World War I as... | Exhibitions

Falling Stars: World War I as the End of the Road: Disrupted Lives from Boccioni to Schiele

Kunsthalle zu Kiel

Kiel | Germany

Oct 11, 2014 - Feb 08, 2015

The Kunsthalle zu Kiel is commemorating the anniversary of the beginning of the First World War with the exhibition Falling Stars, presenting a unique and representative cross section of pre-war modernism in Germany and Europe. Falling Stars engages with European artists whose lives and artistic careers found an abrupt end due to the War and the attendant circumstances, such as Spanish influenza and suicide. The title of the show quotes the expressionist poet August Stramm, who wrote the poem 鈥淲unde鈥� (Wound) during World War I and was also one of its many victims.

The works of 60 artists from 12 European nations are on view in the presentation. Some of the names have been indelibly etched in the memories of international and German art lovers. Such is the case, for example, with Franz Marc and August Macke, Albert Weisgerber and Umberto Boccioni. But the oeuvres of many other artists are, if at all, only sparsely represented in public collections and find, with this exhibition, a public forum for the very first time. Falling Stars unfolds a broad spectrum of highly diverse styles and movements of a period of time steeped in drastic political upheaval and radical artistic change. We will be mounting paintings, prints and sculptures by largely young talents who were hardly blessed with enough time to find maturity in their work. Thus the exhibition intrinsically asks in what respects this caesura impacted modern art in general.

Not only the artists presented in Falling Stars are from all over Europe, the same is also true of both public and private lenders. They range from the Tate in London to the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, from the Funda莽茫o Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.