The museum’s galleries are filled with festivity, freedom and bursts of colour. The Great Art Explosion celebrates the flourishing of Dutch modernism in a European context in 1913. The art world seemed to be dancing on the volcano, just before the peace of Europe went up in flames.
With this exhibition, museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm bids farewell to Singer Laren after seventeen years. During this time, he has often been moved by artworks of expressive dynamism and particular eloquence. Remarkably, many of these paintings happen to date from 1913. Which prompted an in-depth art-historical exploration of this turbulent period. Highlights from the Singer Laren Collection, such as Composition de fleurs by Jan Sluijters and Summer Flowers by Leo Gestel, form the starting point of this visual journey. The common thread is Dutch paintings from 1913 that were shown at sensational exhibitions that year. Pioneers from the Netherlands exhibited their work side by side with the European avant-garde, including artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Amedeo Modigliani, August Macke, Henri Le Fauconnier and Robert Delaunay.
The Great Art Explosion
From 1911 to 1913, Dutch artists and critics became increasingly familiar with modernist movements such as cubism, futurism and expressionism, which hailed from France, Italy and Germany. Exhibitions of work by the avant-garde at artists’ associations and galleries sparked widespread debate in the press. International artistic exchange reached a high point in 1913. In addition to shows by foreign modernists in the Netherlands, a number of Dutch artistic innovators exhibited work at leading international exhibitions, inclusing the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon) in Berlin.
Artists’ associations played a vital role in the spread of modern art in the Netherlands. Artist Conrad Kickert, for example, established the Moderne Kunstkring (Mordern Art Circle), along with Jan Sluijters and Piet Mondrian. From 1911 onwards, cubist works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were shown at their exhibitions. In 1912, Dutch modernists founded the jury-free artists’ association De Onafhankelijken (The Independents), driven by ‘a fierce aversion to anything that impedes and constrains’
This large painting seems like an advertisement for the vibrancy of life in Paris in 1913. The kaleidoscopic image is based on a newspaper photograph of the victorious Cardiff rugby team. Delaunay combines contemporary elements like the Eiffel Tower, a Ferris wheel, a plane and large advertising hoardings with images of leaping rugby players. Everything points upwards in this dynamic composition, a symbol of a new age, full of expectation for the future.