Leseprobe

35 Museum für Neue Kunst: The Horst und Gabriele Siedle-Kunststiftung was inaugurated in 2003. With this step, you and your late husband effect­ ively decided to carry the collection permanently into the future and make it accessible to the general public. Our very first question is aimed at your personal beginnings: how did you find your way to art and what particularly interests you about it? Gabriele Siedle: I actually got into art through my interest in architecture and fashion. From a very early age, build- ings – be they houses, schools, factories, office buildings and their immediate environs – had a pronounced effect on me. I perceived them intensively in their entirety, including spaces and atmospheres, subjectively describ- ing them as inviting or, more likely, as forbidding, clear and beautiful, rather oppressive, martial or in bad style. I wanted to know whether I could connect my subjective perception to ideas and arguments somewhere or other, and as a result I got into architecture and building styles more intensively. This preoccupation was effectively a fast track – via the period of Classical Modernism – to the Bauhaus in particular. I was enthusiastic about the formal language of the Bauhaus, but also about the guiding principle that architecture should be seen as part of a gesamtkunstwerk . In addition to architecture, I was interested in fash- ion from an early age with its broad and diverse potential to react immediately to the spirit of the times and changes in society. Or even to set a social movement in motion or to accelerate it. I’m thinking, for example, of Coco Chanel, who in the 1930s liberated women from constraints in an almost revolutionary way; or Marlene Dietrich, who made a statement with the first trouser suit. For me, fashion is also the history of society. Moreover – and this is the special and beautiful thing about fashion – the way one dresses, the materials one adorns oneself with – offers each individual the possibility of making a non-verbal statement or a chance to slip into different roles. My bookshelf contains several photographic books and catalogues featuring twentieth-century fashion. An interest in architecture and fashion and the preoccupation with the Bauhaus per se led rapidly to art – the freest and strongest form of and scope for any ex­ pression. And of course, when dealing with Classical Modernism, there is no way around the absolutely excep- tional figure in art, Picasso. The diversity of his artistic forms of expression and techniques fascinates me just as much as the person, Pablo Picasso. Any attempt to classify him as an artist like other artists is bound to fail, as does any attempt to draw a clear picture of Picasso as a person. All his facets are too manifold and too contra- dictory as well. And that is precisely what is so fascinating about this towering genius of the century. Once you’ve taken an interest in him, you can’t let him go. I felt particularly drawn to the Brücke artists very early on, who, with their mode of living and working, their visual language and completely free artistic expression, became examples of a new attitude to life and a social movement. Their works tell stories and history expressively; unlike Naturalism or Realism, they used their artistic freedom to express emotions, light-heartedness, love, sadness and also protest, with immediacy and authenticity. This was out of step with the received view of art and the Nazi’s ideal of beauty and was the reason why their works were declared “degenerate art”. This is another compelling reason to look at this period in art, not only because of its expressive language and vivid colour palette – but also lest we forget. MNK: Buying art sometimes leads to collecting art. What was the catalyst for you and your husband to start a collection? Was there a specific work that became the corner stone, the starting point of your collection? GS: My husband had already bought art and had also started collecting before we were a couple. Part of his interest in art was certainly family-related, in his DNA as it were, as all the generations before him were indirectly or directly connected with art. It began in the middle of the eighteenth century with the foundry and casting trade, which was further developed into a master craftsman’s art. Grandfather Hektor Siedle chaired the “Museum” association and great-uncle Robert Siedle, who wrote the first company chronicle, flirted with becoming a painter or sculptor. And finally, my husband’s father, Max H. Siedle, was a passionate painter in addition to his entrepreneurial activities and completed drawing and painting courses at one of the leading art and craft schools, the Reimann School. Beautiful watercolours and oil paintings still bear testimony to his artistic side. My husband never had any ambitions to paint or draw himself, especially since as a boy he often had to accompany his father when he was painting, when he would much rather have been playing football with his friends. All the more reason for him to have a feel and eye for beautiful things, especially art. A ga ins t th e back g round of th e co ll ection’s a im t o depict works fr o m t h e a r t ists’ d ifferent creat i v e periods as r e t r o specti v e l y as p o ss i b l e.