Kataklump. Heinrich Campendonk, Paul van Ostaijen, Fritz Stuckenberg

STURM artist Fritz Stuckenberg and poet Paul van Ostaijen met in Berlin in 1918. Shortly thereafter, Stuckenberg moved to Seeshaupt in Bavaria, but they remained in contact. An intense and intimate correspondence ensued, which still offers intimate insights into the lives and work of avant-garde artists. The letters describe their search for new forms of expression, their plans and also their failures, their struggle for visibility, and their confrontations with bourgeois moral concepts. During the Weimar Republic, Seeshaupt made efforts to develop into an artists' colony. Heinrich Campendonk, who lived here, appears regularly in the correspondence between Paul van Ostaijen and Fritz Stuckenberg. As a successful artist, he is able to arrange exhibition opportunities for Stuckenberg and ensures that collectors such as Katherine Dreier from New York come to the studios in Seeshaupt.

The exhibition displays works by Heinrich Campendonk and Fritz Stuckenberg, which were created around 1920 and formed the basis for the discussions in Seeshaupt. For the first time, correspondence and publications by Paul van Ostaijen are included in order to paint a comprehensive picture of the reality of life for creative artists in the Weimar Republic.

With works by Heinrich Campendonk, Paul van Ostaijen, Fritz Stuckenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Georg Muche, Kurt Schwitters, Arnold Topp, and William. Wauer

Kataklump is being created in collaboration with the Paul van Ostaijen Society in Antwerp and will have a second stop at the Museum Penzberg – Campendonk Collection.

A digital publication accompanying the exhibition will be available free of charge from anywhere. It includes texts on the artists, their friendship, and contemporary history, as well as excerpts from correspondence and comprehensive documentation of the exhibition and individual works.

Click here for the publication: Kataklump Digital

With texts by Matilda Felix, Gisela Geiger, Matthijs de Ridder, and Lena Reichelt.