At the beginning of the 1920s, an unprecedented program of architectural and cultural renewal was constituted in Frankfurt am Main, which went down in cultural history under the name "New Frankfurt". During the Weimar Republic, the city develops into the archetype of the modern metropolis, attracting attention far beyond Frankfurt's borders.
Today, the Bauhaus is considered by many to be the cradle of modernism. But the famous school of art and design was not the sole focus of novel design in Germany and Europe. By the end of the 1920s, Frankfurt had established itself as a world-renowned centre of the avant-garde on a par with the Bauhaus. The exhibition "Modernism on the Main 1919-1933" vividly demonstrates that the New Frankfurt was not exhausted by the well-known housing programme initiated by Ernst May. From the second half of the 1920s onwards, the metropolitan utopia encompassed a universal aspiration in fashion, interior, industrial, product and communication design. The applied and liberal arts permeate all areas of human life with new forms. In conjunction with accelerated industrialization and the expansion of municipal areas, the New Frankfurt is intended to shape a modern urban society.
Decisive protagonists are the resurrected trade fair, the municipal structural engineering office, and the Frankfurt School of Art, which undergoes a significant reorientation under Fritz Wichert. But other associations and communities of interest committed to the new design, as well as a considerable number of private entrepreneurs - e.g. Bünte & Remmler, the Bauersche Gießerei or Fuld and Co. - also bear the modernism on the Main. With their work, they are all actively involved in an aesthetic as well as social reshaping in the sense of the New Frankfurt, which is also perceived outside the city.
The exhibition paints a picture of awakening, role model function and examination of the question of whether and in what way fundamental social changes should also bring about aesthetic change and how the new comes into the world.
The exhibition is part of a joint initiative by three Frankfurt museums - the Museum Angewandte Kunst, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Historische n Museum Frankfurt - and the newly founded Forum Neues Frankfurt to mark the Bauhaus anniversary in 2019.
Curators: Prof. Dr. Klaus Klemp, Prof. Matthias Wagner K, Grit Weber, Annika Sellmann
Source and further information: https://www.museumangewandtekunst.de/de/museum/ausstellungen/moderne-am-main.html
