PROGRAM 2024

08.05.2024–06.10.2024
UNKNOWN FAMILIARS
THE VIENNA INSURANCE GROUP COLLECTIONS

Curator: Philippe Batka, Vanessa Joan Müller

In this exhibition at the Leopold Museum, the highlights from six collections of the Vienna Insurance Group will encounter each other for the first time. Despite the collections’ different emphases and evolutions, their works are unknown familiars, as they all hail from compilations gathered by companies belonging to the same family. The Vienna Insurance Group’s 200-year anniversary provides the opportunity to present the collections of the VIG, the Wiener Städtische Versicherung, the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein, the Donau Versicherung, the Serbian Wiener Städtische Osiguranje as well as the Latvian BTA Baltic.

24.05.2024–29.09.2024
SPLENDOR AND MISERY
NEW OBJECTIVITY IN GERMANY

Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger

The ramifications of World War I called for new depictions of reality in art. The  resignation, accusations and indescribable hardship that characterized this time on the one hand, and the hope, longings and emerging zest for life of the “Golden Twenties’” on the other, found expression in a new type of art – one that was unsentimental, sober, specific and purist; one that described the world in an objective, realistic manner. Artists including Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Grethe Jürgens, Lotte Laserstein, Felix Nussbaum, Gerta Overbeck, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter and many others, captured the zeitgeist on canvas and paper. This, the first comprehensive exhibition of German New Objectivity in Austria, follows on from the Leopold Museum’s previous presentations The Twilight of Humanity (2021) and Hagenbund. From Moderate to Radical Modernism (2022), which both highlighted tendencies of New Objectivity.

30.10.2024–16.02.2025
RUDOLF WACKER
MAGIC AND ABYSSES OF REALITY

Curators: Marianne Hussl-Hörmann, Laura Feurle

From late October, the Leopold Museum is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to Rudolf Wacker (1893–1939), one of the most eminent exponents of New Objectivity in Austria. Wacker studied in Vienna and Weimar under Albin Egger-Lienz. During World War I, he was captured as a prisoner of war in 1915. Upon his release in 1920, he tried to forge a career in Berlin and Vienna, before he returned to his hometown of Bregenz with his wife Ilse Moebius in 1924. His oeuvre focused on landscapes and backyards, self-portraits and female nudes, but also on random items found by the artist which he incorporated into his works in ever new compositions. In light of the era’s increasingly volatile political situation and frequent breaches with social taboos, his works can be read as encrypted messages. Featuring numerous loans from institutions and private collections, the presentation affords a comprehensive overview of Wacker’s multi-faceted painterly and graphic oeuvre, complemented by reference works by artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz and Max Beckmann.

13.11.2024–09.03.2025
POETRY OF THE ORNAMENT
THE BACKHAUSEN ARCHIVES

Curators: Ursula Graf, Aline Marion Steinwender

The company Joh. Backhausen & Söhne, founded in 1849, is among the most tradition-steeped producers of upholstery and decorative fabrics in Viennese history. The company’s main lines of production were premium fashionable fabrics, fabrics for upholstery and curtains, as well as damasks, brocades and carpets made from silk and wool. From 1903, Backhausen focused on collaborations with artists of Viennese Modernism, including Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Jutta Sika, Dagobert Peche, My Ullmann and Otto Prutscher. The company specialized in turning their designs into commercial products, and established itself as the main supplier of the Wiener Werkstätte. The exhibition affords insights into the holdings of the Backhausen Archives, introduces numerous artists and sheds light on individual production stages – from the design via fabric samples all the way to the execution. It pays tribute to Dr. Louise Kiesling (1957–2022) who, with passionate enthusiasm and great ideational and monetary commitment, preserved the Backhausen Archives for posterity.

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