The significance of print portfolios for the early twentieth-century avant-garde has hitherto been underestimated. On closer inspection, the great potential of this collaborative art form becomes evident – as an origin for technical experimentation and a means of publicly disseminating artistic ideas, but also as a way of producing objects for sale on the art market.
The exhibition will present a selection of print portfolios from the rich holdings of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, among them the virtually unknown "SEMA-Portfolio" of 1912 as well as sheets from the four important and extremely rare "Bauhaus Prints: New European Graphic Art" portfolios of the 1920s.
Masterworks of European avant-garde printmaking will be on view – from Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee to Franz Marc and Egon Schiele.