Art Calendar – Current Exhibitions in Germany

Bayer AG was founded in 1863 in Leverkusen, twenty kilometres down the Rhine from Cologne. As when it was founded 150 years ago, today Bayer still makes chemical and pharmaceutical products. About 100,000 people are employed by the more than 300 companies of the Bayer Group.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the then General Director Carl Duisburg already began to build a company art collection. This was seen as part of the educational activities for the company’s employees: everyone should be able, if he liked, to choose a picture for his office. And so Bayer collected art; today its collection numbers 2,000 artworks. To celebrate its 150th anniversary, Bayer AG is now showing about 250 works from the collection at the Martin Gropius Building in Berlin.

The collection was not built on a systematic principle. But five divisions can be made out. Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, for example, represent German Expressionism. Georges Braque, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso exemplify the Parisian art scene of the first half of the twentieth century. There are also works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay, a key figure of Informal Art in post-war Germany. The American West Coast is represented by Ed Ruscha, David Hockney and Sam Francis. And last but not least, the collection would not be complete without contemporary German artists such as Gerhard Richter and Albert Oehlen.