1 Mar – 22 Jun 2025
Project Space, Floor 2
This focused display showcases highlights from The Courtauld’s collection of German and Austrian modernist works on paper – including pencil and ink drawings, lithographs, woodblock prints and etchings – by some of the best-known artists from the period such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Oskar Kokoschka.
Presenting a broad variety of techniques, from the highly crafted to the visceral and ranging from portraits and narrative subjects to abstract works that exploit the possibilities of pure line and gestural mark-making, these works emerged from a cultural context in which the graphic arts were no longer considered merely preparatory sketches or cheap populist alternatives to high art.
Conceived as complete, self-contained works of art in themselves, the display demonstrates the artists’ commitment to using the inherent material properties of the graphic arts to communicate complex ideas around issues including gender conflict, metaphysics, politics and attitudes towards tradition and innovation.
