FRANKFURT.- The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is inaugurating the Hall 1 of it’s new, temporary venue in Frankfurt's Bockenheim district with the world’s first comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to a pioneer of the Dada movement, Suzanne Duchamp (1889–1963). The retrospective shows the multifaceted oeuvre of an artist whose work extended over a period of fifty years and who contributed to the development of Dadaism during the 1910s and early '20s. Although her works are represented in world-famous collections, and she had strong connections to major art world figures during her lifetime, her artistic significance has long been overshadowed by her brothers Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon, as well as by her husband, Jean Crotti. The first retrospective, developed in cooperation with Kunsthaus Zürich, contains around eighty works, and includes experimental collages, figurative representations, abstract paintings, photographs, and prints, as well as findings from the archives. Together, the works illustrate Duchamp's artistic independence and freedom.
Sebastian Baden, Director of the Schirn, notes: “In this first retrospective of Suzanne Duchamp, the Schirn is directing the focus toward an artist of modernism who, despite her participation in the European avant-garde and her contributions to Dadaism, has so far not received a comprehensive appreciation of her oeuvre. This is an astonishing gap that the Schirn is now filling with this exhibition and the results of new research into her works. It thus presents a lively and thorough overview of the creative work of the Dada artist. In all of its phases, Duchamp’s work reflected her alert mind as she kept her finger on the pulse of time with her highly individual pictorial language, originality, and subtle sense of humor.”
The exhibition particularly focuses on her innovative treatment of materials and media, but also on her broad artistic range, which often defies art-historical categories. Humor and an air of mystery lend Duchamp’s art its characteristic voice. By the mid-1910s, she had developed a subtle pictorial language that was unique within the Dada movement for its combination of the readymade, poetic inscriptions, and geometric forms. In addition to her Dada works, the exhibition illuminates Duchamp's early Cubist interiors and urban landscapes, and figurative paintings with frequent ironic undertones, as well as landscapes of the 1930s and ’40s and her late works, which return to abstraction.
Ingrid Pfeiffer and Talia Kwartler, curators of the exhibition, further remark: “Suzanne Duchamp entered the art scene in a confident and self-assured manner at an early stage. Unlike many other modern women artists, she did not have to assert herself in the face of the obstacles that barred the way of many of her female colleagues. As a result of the support she received from her family, and especially her close relationship with her brothers, she moved within a smoothly operating network and received official recognition as an artist during her lifetime. However, the significance of her work was posthumously neglected within art history; her late work in particular is little known. Duchamp was a subtle and ironic observer and commentator, who over a period of some fifty years left her mark on modern art with her individual artistic style.”
A catalog Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective by Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft / Kunsthaus Zürich and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, with contributions by Anne Berest Picabia, Carole Boulbès, Cathérine Hug, Talia Kwartler, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Effie Rentzou, and Amy Sillman, as well as a foreword cowritten by the director of Kunsthaus Zürich, Ann Demeester, and the director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Sebastian Baden has been published at Hatje Cantz Verlag in a German-English edition.
From fall 2025, the new print magazine SCHIRN PAPER will be released three times a year at the Schirn's new venue as a supplement to the existing digital SCHIRN MAG, which is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary this year. On the occasion of the exhibition Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective, the print magazine will contain contributions by Talia Kwartler and Ingrid Pfeiffer.
