PARA-MODERNE. Lebensreformen ab 1900
In the organizer's words:
Be free! From the constraints of bourgeois life, from capitalism and industrial society. This was the dream of many young people around 1900 - and they made plans to get out: some of them started an alternative life in reform colonies away from the cities. A return to nature and a life in peace were at the center of these plans, as well as health, physical culture and spirituality - a new attitude to life that was to find a suitable aesthetic.
In art and design, Art Nouveau and Expressionism brought new creative impulses. The movement also found expression in everyday culture: a vegetarian diet, the rejection of bourgeois marriage and old gender roles, naturism, alternative education and, last but not least, the media with which all of this could be propagated. Where did the new perspectives lead and which ideas do we recognize in the zeitgeist today? The exhibition sheds light on the ideals of the early life reform movements, but also on individual reformers who elevated their esoteric world view and idealization of the "healthy" body to racist and nationalist ideologies.
In addition to the developments in Europe, it is above all the links to American counter-culture and the flower power movement that the exhibition presents comprehensively for the first time.
GUSTAV KLIMT'S MASTERPIECE IS COMING!
For the exhibition, the Bundeskunsthalle has succeeded in borrowing a major work by Gustav Klimt from the Vienna Theater Museum. With his NUDA VERITAS (1899), Klimt rigorously defied the established norms of art. The combination of image and writing, the symbolist depiction and the embedding of the motifs in an ornamental design - all this was a rejection of the prevailing academicism. Among other things, the exhibition focuses on the close connection between Art Nouveau art and the ideas of the Lebensreform movement.
PARA-MODERNE
Life reforms from 1900 onwards
April 11 to August 10, 2025
Federal Art Gallery, Bonn
Price information:
Day ticket for all exhibitions: €13/erm. €6.50 Free admission up to and including 18 years, with free ELLAH Card ² for pupils, students and trainees up to 25 years. Free admission for refugees Happy hour ticket (1 hour before closing): €7 for all exhibitions ² All information about the free ELLAH Card here: www.bundeskunsthalle.de/jahreskarten
Location
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