RED X STEEL

For a long time it was Alf Lechner's desire to show a joint exhibition with his friend Rupprecht Geiger in the Lechner Museum. In the years before Geiger's death in 2009, this wish could not be realized. The Lechner Museum in Ingolstadt is now realizing this idea on the occasion of its 20th anniversary in close cooperation with Julia Geiger and the Geiger Archive. The exhibition juxtaposes the works of Alf Lechner and Rupprecht Geiger on both floors of the museum. Eleven steel sculptures and three large drawings by Alf Lechner, addressing the square, the sphere and the arc, enter into a dialogue with the colourful pictorial design of circle, square and rectangle in the often monochrome work of Rupprecht Geiger. The exhibition illuminates the development of both artists as leading figures of abstraction as well as the significance of surfaces and form as a physical experience of colour and sculptural space. The "transformation of colour matter into the spirit of colour" described by Geiger is directly related to Lechner's "complexity of simplicity". The exhibited works impressively show how both artists worked from different points of view, that of the painter and that of the sculptor, in a common direction of abstraction, expressive and formal language.

Rupprecht Geiger is one of the most important abstract painters of the German post-war avantgarde; Alf Lechner is the most important steel sculptor of post-war modernism in Germany. Both artists were autodidacts and are connected in their work, their friendship and through their Bavarian and Munich roots.

LECHNER MUSEUM in Ingolstadt
The steel sculptor Alf Lechner (1925–2017) created an impressive body of abstract sculpture, most of it in solid steel, and a sizeable œuvre of over 4,500 drawings and collages. Many of the nearly 800 sculptures can now be seen in public urban spaces around Germany and in international collections. Six large sculptures are on display in Ingolstadt, where they have been housed since February 2000 at the Lechner Museum. Alf Lechner, whose works often defy the spatial and structural constraints of traditional museums and galleries, created this dedicated setting so that he could also show his space installations and massive sculptures indoors. Regularly changing exhibitions at the Lechner Museum feature either works by the sculptor or special shows devoted to artists of international renown who have made important contributions to contemporary art since 1960 in the context of Alf Lechner.

LECHNER SCULPTURE PARK in Obereichstätt
In the late 1990s, when an opportunity arose to acquire the site of the former Royal Bavarian Ironworks and associated quarry in the picturesque Altmühl Valley, the artist Alf Lechner, who was already 75, and his wife Camilla decided to tackle the megaproject. They converted 23,000 square metres of derelict industrial land into an artist’s habitat with workshops and a sculpture park. It takes about 35 minutes by car to drive from the Lechner Museum in Ingolstadt to the Lechner Sculpture Park in Obereichstätt.

Special exhibition:

RED X STEEL
Rupprecht Geiger and Alf Lechner
20 February to 13 September, 2020

LECHNER MUSEUM, Esplanade 9, 85049 Ingolstadt
Open: Thu – Sun, 10 am – 5 pm

Since May 17, 2020, the museum will resume its exhibition operations, taking into account the necessary hygiene protection measures.

LECHNER SCULPTURE PARK
Allee 3, 91795 Obereichstätt
To see the Lechner Sculpture Park, visitors need to register for a guided tour.

www.lechner-museum.de