Kunst der Westküste explores the early impulses of northern modernism
Jan Toorop, Dike Path near Westkapelle, 1910, © Museum Kunst der Westküste.
ALKERSUM/FÖHR.—
This exhibition is devoted to a fascinating chapter in the history of European art: the early impulses of modern art in the north. From the Netherlands to Norway, new perspectives on light, colour and nature emerged along the coast – far from urban centres but always in a vibrant dialogue with them.
Here “modernism” means more than just artistic styles , it is an attitude: the courage to call into question what can be seen , to shift perspectives and to set a new way of thought in motion. Sustained by individuals or worked out in artists’ colonies – the spark of modernism was gradually ignited along the edge of the continent.
Based on the museum's own collection and enriched by important international loans, the exhibition highlights places where modernism encountered the sea – and tells the stories behind the pictures. It shows paintings representing the work of renowned artists like Max Beckmann, Jacoba van Heemskerck and Edvard Munch as well as painters who have previously received insufficient attention.
The major themes of modern art present themselves in the mirror of the north: technical experimentation, the transition from naturalism to the free composition of colour and form, reductivism as an artistic provocation and, not least, the sea as a ground on which to project existential experiences. The exhibition invites visitors to rediscover the modernist awakening from an unfamiliar perspective – as an artistic movement between the sea, sky and horizon.
