WHICH MODERNISM? In- and Outsiders of the Avant-Garde
Sprengel Museum Hannover

“The ‘Naïve’ was a stylistic phenomenon, not a ‘shadow’ of the avant-garde.”

Which artists are still regarded as masters of modernism today? And who has been forgotten and excluded from canonization? Revisiting the exhibition Les maîtres populaires de la réalité held in Paris in 1937, the Sprengel Museum Hannover and Kunstsammlung Chemnitz present Which Modernism? In- and Outsiders of the Avant-Garde, an exploration of creative positions between so-called naïve and avant-garde art, and frame an unwonted perspective on the era of classic modernism and the rich diversity of the art that was displayed at the time. The catalogue documents the close ties between artists whose reputations and market values still diverge widely today in an effort to revise accepted ideas about the ostensible outsiders and reveal the manifold affinities between the “naïve” artists and their renowned colleagues.

Which Modernism? In- and Outsiders of the Avant-Garde focuses on the oeuvres of André Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Adolph Dietrich, Séraphine Louis, Henri Rousseau and Adalbert Trillhaase and highlights their affiliation with the creations of leading exponents of classic modernism like Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Felix Nussbaum or Pablo Picasso. With a text by Manja Wilkens, an essay by Sabine Maria Schmidt as well as a foreword by Frédéric Bussmann and Reinhard Spieler.