Günther Förg: A Fragile Beauty

With over 100 artworks in its collection, Deutsche Bank has been collecting the works of Günther Förg for almost 40 years. Förg was closely associated with the Cologne scene of the 1980s, a group of irreverent artists who challenged the traditions of painting. “Günther Förg: A Fragile Beauty” is the first major museum presentation of the artist's work in the United States since 1989. The exhibition will survey the prolific and provocative career of the late artist Günther Förg (1952 -2013) whose oeuvre embodies a critical, witty, yet rigorous and penetrating critique of the canon of modern art.  He was driven by a boundless urge for freedom, and a predilection for experiment, drawing inspiration from great artists of the past, as well as his contemporaries. Merging disciplines and boundaries, he worked in a variety of materials, ranging from bronze and lead, to plaster and reflective glass. “A Fragile Beauty” comprises work from Förg's entire oeuvre, including several works loaned by the Deutshe Bank Collection, which illuminates the evolution of his experimental and radical approach. This exhibition will bring renewed attention to Förg's work by examining his legacy in relation to key issues of the 20th century, including postwar nostalgia and loss and the utopianism of high modernism.