An overview of the oeuvre of the German painter Max Ackermann (1887-1975) can be compared to a walk through the art of the 20th century – except that Max Ackermann did not want to adapt the renewed figuration of the 1970s, for by then he had long since found his very own artistic conception and pictorial language in abstraction, and had achieved influence and recognition in the public sphere. Nevertheless, the artist – whose name is unalterably associated with the artistic avant-garde movements in Stuttgart – belongs to the pioneers of early abstraction who have been relegated into the background. Furthermore, he is often reduced solely to his abstract creative phase from the 1940s to the 1970s. But in reality the interwoven path, an oscillating dualism between figuration and abstraction, embraces Max Ackermann’s artistic path up to the middle of the century. In this way, the viewer can stroll extensively through art history, starting with Art Nouveau, which Ackermann became acquainted with during his studies with Henry van de Velde in Weimar, through Verism, an expression of his experiences during and after the First World War, moving on to abstraction and “Absolute Painting” influenced by Adolf Hölzel , further on to delightful beach scenes from his Lake Constance exile, and culminating in “Sound Pictures”, “Island Pictures”, “Bridged Continents” as well as “Rotations”, “Sentinels” and completely free “Compositions”.
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