Collection Prints and drawings

Comprising over 3,000 works on paper, the prints and drawings collection of the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen represents a central department of the museum. Several centuries of prints, drawings and watercolours offer a plethora of insights into the broad spectrum of this medium. The oldest etching, from 1504, dates back to Albrecht Dürer. Together with a print by Rembrandt, it forms the historic core of the collection.

A particular focus of the collection are its Expressionist prints and drawings which harmoniously complement the museum’s holdings of paintings and sculptures from this period. Of outstanding interest are the numerous portfolios with thematic series by artists such as Ernst Barlach, Marc Chagall, Oskar Kokoschka and Käthe Kollwitz. The Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen also owns the aquatint series La Tauromaquia (1959), Pablo Picasso’s studies of Spanish bull-fighting. A further highlight is the celebrated French caricaturist Honoré Daumier, the acerbic commentator of politics and society in the nineteenth century, whose work is represented through original newspaper prints and individual lithographs. A central role in the prints and drawings collection is played by the Gelsenkirchen-born artist Anton Stankowski. By combining the fields of fine art and applied art, Stankowski was highly influential in the development of Concrete art, as well as for modern graphic design – creating in the 1970s, among others, the logo for Deutsche Bank.