Deutsche Bank extends its cooperation with Frankfurt’s Städel Museum

The Städel Museum and Deutsche Bank have been collaborating for many years. One milestone in the partnership was the transfer of 600 important works of art from the Deutsche Bank Collection to the Städel Museum in 2008. The collection includes works by Georg Baselitz, Hanne Darboven, Sigmar Polke, Neo Rauch, Gerhard Richter, and Rosemarie Trockel. The Deutsche Bank Collection in the Städel Museum has enabled the Städel to significantly expand its holdings in the field of contemporary art. Deutsche Bank has been a corporate partner of the Städel Museum since 2012. Now the cooperation is being extended for another five years. On this occasion, the museum will receive further outstanding works of modern and contemporary German art on permanent loan: a self-portrait by Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, two drawings by Max Beckmann, and a painting by Wols. The watercolor Self-Portrait (in Fantastic Company), painted in 1931, is the first work by the artist Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler to be included in the Museum’s collection.  The expressive work of the artist, who suffered from psychological problems and was murdered by the National Socialists in 1940, has a similar radiance to that of Otto Dix and Oskar Kokoschka and has been rediscovered in recent decades. The two drawings by Max Beckmann, the large, representative work Portrait of Dr. Heidel (1922) and Rowers (1928), expand the Städel Museum’s important Beckmann collection. Wols executed the small-format painting Le Flèche in 1951, the year of his death. The permanent loan adds another work by an important German Informel artist to the Städel’s collection. 

In addition to its previous activities, Deutsche Bank supports the new Städel Mixtape podcast, which the museum produces in cooperation with the radio station ByteFM. In each episode, music journalists devote themselves to an artwork from the Städel Collection and play a selection of music to accompany the work—from back then to today, from pop and hip-hop to jazz and classical music. They develop something like a soundtrack to the art. A work from the Deutsche Bank Collection has been the subject of Mixtape: Rosemarie Trockel’s 1988 knitted picture Who will be in in ‘99.

Link to MIxtape

Visitors to the Städel Museum can view works by Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler and Max Beckmann in the Study Room of the Department of Prints and Drawings. The painting by Wols is on permanent display in the collection of contemporary art.