MUNICH.- In a lavish feast of color, this survey exhibition highlights a new aspect of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s work, focusing for the first time on the complementary relationship between picture and frame, a subject that, to date, has received scant scholarly attention. Thanks to international loans, some fifty paintings can be shown in their original artist’s frames – an unprecedented opportunity to fully appreciate Kirchner’s idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk.

Picture and frame were inseparable for the German Expressionist. He designed frames for almost every one of his paintings, drawing countless frame profiles, most often painting the bare wood gold bronze and then adding painted decoration. Kirchner’s artist’s frames are rare today; all too often, picture and frame have been separated, the original frames carelessly discarded and replaced with gold frames.

Rediscovered & Reunited presents and reunites what has been separated: paintings and their artist-designed frames. Alongside original picture/frame pairs, very few of which survive, you can see paintings that have only recently been reunited with their frames – small art-historical sensations, given that, in some cases, pictures and frames were separated for decades. The variety of forms with which Kirchner worked and his joy in experimenting with frames show that, for him, it was not only about a deep connection and affinity between picture and frame, but also – in terms of the Expressionist total work of art – about art and the world. In a unique feast of color, the frames mediate between art and the world around it. Come and connect with the world of Kirchner!

Curated by Werner Murrer, Rediscovered & Reunited: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Frames and Paintings focuses on what has been hitherto neglected and never before seen on such a large scale: the artist’s paintings and frames forming an inseparable whole. Now is the time to go and rediscover them as such!

The exhibition is a joint project of the BUCHHEIM MUSEUM in Bernried and the KIRCHNER MUSEUM DAVOS in collaborative research and extensive cooperation with the Munich frame maker and expert on (artist’s) frames Werner Murrer, who is curating the show in Bernried. The show in Davos is curated by the museum’s director, Katharina Beisiegel.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a comprehensive catalogue is published in German and English by HIRMER PUBLISHERS. It is the first publication to catalogue all known Kirchner paintings with original artist’s frames as well as original Kirchner frames not yet matched to paintings.