Exhibition, 24 Nov 2018 - 20 Jan 2019

Alfred Schmela: A Centenary Exhibition

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany

On November 23, 2018, the famous Düsseldorf galerist Alfred Schmela would have celebrated his 100th birthday. To mark the occasion, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen organizes an exhibition that illustrates the widely ramified network of this pioneer of the art scene in the Rhineland.

The setting for the exhibition, assembled by Schmela's granddaughter, the curator Lena Brüning and co-curated by Linda Walther, is Schmela's architectonically incisive gallery building, located in Düsseldorf’s old town. Designed by Aldo van Eyck and inaugurated in 1971, it serves today as one of the three locations of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. Selected works by renowned artists who worked with Alfred Schmela when launching their careers will be presented in conjunction with documentary materials. The exhibition illustrates the international spectrum of the gallery’s program and focuses on central protagonists of and tendencies in the art of the second half of the 20th century – among them Nouveau Réalisme, Pop Art, and ZERO – to whose dissemination and success Alfred Schmela made an essential contribution.