Sports, fun and games in the Würth Collection

Activities we enjoy in our free time, whether sports or games, not only provide exercise and recreation but, giving scope for untrammeled thought, are important sources of artistic creativity. Enjoyment beyond hard and fast rules, innocent pastimes, daydreams, letting oneself go, hanging around, chilling out–all these are aspects of our leisure behavior and can spark creative work. Kunsthalle Würth is presenting a selection of some 200 artworks by 98 artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Willi Baumeister, Philipp Bauknecht, Walter Wörn, Donna Stolz, Tomi Ungerer and Erwin Wurm.

The exhibition „Sports, fun and games in the Würth Collection“ gives an informal review of such classical leisure activities as going to the park, taking a swim, visiting the circus or stadium, down to enjoying the marina, racecourse or club. It is devoted to play as a creative experience, from childish fooling to social games. It includes puppet and shadow theater and discovers, in the public games of antiquity, when socially accepted competition could even end in death, the roots of today's game and contest culture. It sheds light on why so many artists, from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner through Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Max Ernst, down to Alfred Hrdlicka and François Morellet were as devoted to chess and its cachet of genius as they were to boxing. Finally, the exhibition reflects on the Ars ambulandi, the aesthetic of moving through the world on foot, and offers an opportunity for viewers to participate and test their fitness in Hans Magnus Enzensberger's WorldPlayThings or on the humorous benches of Jeppe Hein.

Würth Collection

The art collection, the foundations of which were laid by Reinhold Würth in the 1970s, today comprises more than 18,500 works of art. It mainly focuses on painting, graphic art and sculptures created in the time between the end of the 19th century and the present time.