A proper summer
A painting of David Hockney’s quadriptych "Three trees near Thixendale, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter", exhibited in the museum Würth II, Gaisbach (Kuenzelsau), Franconia (Baden-Wuerttemberg)
Some background information:
If you drive through the countryside of the rural district of Hohenlohe with its pastures and little villages in the northeast of the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, you wouldn’t expect an art museum of international reputation being located in this area. However the museums Würth 1 and Würth 2 are and that has a particular reason: Both museums are attached to the headquarters of Würth Group, a multinational company and the biggest producer of screws in the world.
In 1954, the German billionaire Richard Würth took over a two-man business from his father at the age of 19 and made it a successful worldwide concern with almost 86,000 employees today. In the 70s, Würth began to collect art. Since then, he has collected roughly 18,500 works of art. His passion for collecting art even resulted in art becoming an important element of the Würth company culture. The most important works of art are made publicly available in altogether five museums of the Würth Group. All of them are freely accessible.
The newest of the five Würth museums is the museum Würth 2. It was attached to a forum, named after Reinhold Würth’s wife Carmen. The forum was opened in 2017, on occasion of the 80th birthday of Carmen Würth, while the extension building with the museum was opened in 2020. Both forum and museum were planned by the English architect David Chipperfield, who is based in Berlin. The extension building costed 39 million Euro, is dedicated to art from the late 19th to the 21st centuries and has a surface area of 5,500 square metres.
Beyond that, the Carmen Würth Forum is surrounded by an extensive sculpture garden. This sculpture garden features large sculptures of world-renowned sculptors, such as Georg Baselitz, Niki de Saint Phalle, Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Caro, Alfred Hrdlicka, Eduardo Chillida and Jaume Plensa. However, the heart of the art collection is situated inside the museum.
On two floors, visitors can admire paintings and sculptures of modern painters and sculptors famous the world over. The collection comprises numerous artworks of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Legér, Rene Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Edvard Munch, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Eugene Boudin, Joan Miró, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, Anselm Kiefer, David Hockney, Jörg Immendorff, Jean Arp, Fernando Botero, Serge Poliakoff and Gerhard Richter, to name only the best known artists.
If you want to visit the museum, just follow the A6 motorway between Nuremberg and Heilbronn. Take the exit to Kupferzell then and follow the road about 9 km (5.6 miles) towards Kuenzelsau. After having arrived in Gailsbach, the museum is well-signposted. And if you are interested in art, you definitely won’t regret your visit.
About David Hockney:
David Hockney, who was born in 1937, is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Hockney grew up in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire. He studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In 1964 he moved to Los Angeles, but returned to Europe in the 1990s.
He has experimented with painting, drawing, printmaking, watercolours, photography, and many other media including a fax machine, paper pulp, computer applications and iPad drawing programs. The subject matter of interest ranges from still lifes to landscapes, portraits of friends, his dogs, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
His works are housed in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including the 1853 Gallery at Salts Mill, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name just a few.
Hockney has always had a vivid interest in fashion too: In 1986, he was inducted into Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame. In 2005, Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey centred his entire spring/summer menswear collection around the artist. And in 2012, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a close friend, named a checked jacket after Hockney. In 2011, British GQ named him one of the 50 Most Stylish Men in Britain and in March 2013, he was listed as one of the Fifty Best-dressed Over-50s by The Guardian.
A proper summer
A painting of David Hockney’s quadriptych "Three trees near Thixendale, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter", exhibited in the museum Würth II, Gaisbach (Kuenzelsau), Franconia (Baden-Wuerttemberg)
Some background information:
If you drive through the countryside of the rural district of Hohenlohe with its pastures and little villages in the northeast of the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, you wouldn’t expect an art museum of international reputation being located in this area. However the museums Würth 1 and Würth 2 are and that has a particular reason: Both museums are attached to the headquarters of Würth Group, a multinational company and the biggest producer of screws in the world.
In 1954, the German billionaire Richard Würth took over a two-man business from his father at the age of 19 and made it a successful worldwide concern with almost 86,000 employees today. In the 70s, Würth began to collect art. Since then, he has collected roughly 18,500 works of art. His passion for collecting art even resulted in art becoming an important element of the Würth company culture. The most important works of art are made publicly available in altogether five museums of the Würth Group. All of them are freely accessible.
The newest of the five Würth museums is the museum Würth 2. It was attached to a forum, named after Reinhold Würth’s wife Carmen. The forum was opened in 2017, on occasion of the 80th birthday of Carmen Würth, while the extension building with the museum was opened in 2020. Both forum and museum were planned by the English architect David Chipperfield, who is based in Berlin. The extension building costed 39 million Euro, is dedicated to art from the late 19th to the 21st centuries and has a surface area of 5,500 square metres.
Beyond that, the Carmen Würth Forum is surrounded by an extensive sculpture garden. This sculpture garden features large sculptures of world-renowned sculptors, such as Georg Baselitz, Niki de Saint Phalle, Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Caro, Alfred Hrdlicka, Eduardo Chillida and Jaume Plensa. However, the heart of the art collection is situated inside the museum.
On two floors, visitors can admire paintings and sculptures of modern painters and sculptors famous the world over. The collection comprises numerous artworks of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Legér, Rene Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Edvard Munch, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Eugene Boudin, Joan Miró, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, Anselm Kiefer, David Hockney, Jörg Immendorff, Jean Arp, Fernando Botero, Serge Poliakoff and Gerhard Richter, to name only the best known artists.
If you want to visit the museum, just follow the A6 motorway between Nuremberg and Heilbronn. Take the exit to Kupferzell then and follow the road about 9 km (5.6 miles) towards Kuenzelsau. After having arrived in Gailsbach, the museum is well-signposted. And if you are interested in art, you definitely won’t regret your visit.
About David Hockney:
David Hockney, who was born in 1937, is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Hockney grew up in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire. He studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In 1964 he moved to Los Angeles, but returned to Europe in the 1990s.
He has experimented with painting, drawing, printmaking, watercolours, photography, and many other media including a fax machine, paper pulp, computer applications and iPad drawing programs. The subject matter of interest ranges from still lifes to landscapes, portraits of friends, his dogs, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
His works are housed in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including the 1853 Gallery at Salts Mill, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name just a few.
Hockney has always had a vivid interest in fashion too: In 1986, he was inducted into Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame. In 2005, Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey centred his entire spring/summer menswear collection around the artist. And in 2012, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a close friend, named a checked jacket after Hockney. In 2011, British GQ named him one of the 50 Most Stylish Men in Britain and in March 2013, he was listed as one of the Fifty Best-dressed Over-50s by The Guardian.