What is it like to live with art? The new collection presentation "In the Garden of Art. Klee, Feininger, Nolde" opens on February 22 at 6 pm at the Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr. The exhibition focuses on the Mülheim collector couple Karl and Maria Ziegler, their relationship to art and the creation of their collection. Works by Emil Nolde will meet works by Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee for the first time in this constellation. A second part of the exhibition is planned for 2026, in which the focus will be on Alexej von Jawlensky, August Macke and Franz Marc.
Karl and Maria Ziegler rarely spoke publicly about their passion for collecting, perhaps only once: "The joy of beauty was the sole reason for acquiring the treasures that surrounded us". They did not collect according to art-historical criteria, but according to purely aesthetic preferences, whereby the couple cultivated their "garden of art" above all with the cheerful and intimate pictures of Expressionism.
If you want to find out more about the Ziegler couple's art collection, you have to look at the pictures with which they furnished their new home on Mülheim's Kahlenberg. Completed in 1957, the house with its large garden was within sight of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research, where Prof. Karl Ziegler had just made a groundbreaking discovery for which he was to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963.
Even the first acquisitions in the late 1950s expressed the "joy of beauty" in a particularly impressive way. Above all, it is the numerous floral still lifes that remind us of how Maria Ziegler's elaborately and lovingly designed garden continued in the living area in a colorful way.
Paul Klee, Deutsche Stadt BR, 1928, watercolor and pen and ink on paper, Ziegler Collection Foundation © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
With its tiled stove, stucco and ornate wooden doors, the Beletage of the museum provides a harmonious exhibition backdrop to bring the private origins of the museum's paintings to life. The exhibition is also about the collector couple themselves, the living environment of the paintings and the following generation of the family, who established the Ziegler Collection Foundation in 2002 and brought another 72 top-class works of Expressionism into the foundation.
The merger of the two collections in 2013 also resulted in a considerable increase in the size of the individual groups of works. Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and Emil Nolde are among the protagonists of the collection, who are now being honored individually for the first time and presented in a special ambience, supplemented by explanatory texts, films and audio information.
February 23 to January 11, 2026
www.kunstmuseum-muelheim.de
Lyonel Feininger, The Red Tower II, 1930, oil on canvas, Ziegler Collection Foundation © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
