Villa
Ever since Franz Erhard Walther embarked on his artistic practice in Fulda in the late 1950s, his work has been marked by a radical openness, which at first incorporated material processes and later the spectator as an active participant in the realization of the work. Based on the Seng Collection, the VILLA will be presenting alternating Work Presentations showcasing the works that Franz Erhard Walther produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, augmented by loans from the Franz Erhard Walther Foundation and other lenders. The VILLA ties in with the specific place and period in which the works were created, while at the same time contextualizing Franz Erhard Walther’s artistic production in its temporary relevance.
The activities of the VILLA are based on the fundamental principles of Franz Erhard Walther’s work. It is a space in which the work is constantly realized anew – a space in flux, in which the early works are shown in ever new constellations.
The trajectory of Franz Erhard Walther’s articulation of his participatory concept, which underwent a radical change in 1963 with the production of the first pieces of the First Work Set, will be conveyed as a dynamic process that underscores the simultaneity of contrasting approaches and the anticipatory theoretical conception of works that only later came to be materialized.
Between the changing Work Presentations, annual exhibition projects will be staged that place Franz Erhard Walther’s early work in dialogue with other artists and establish references to their specific place of origin, Fulda and the Rhön region. In an exhibition planned for 2023, Franz Erhard Walther’s early works will be shown in dialogue with those of Lygia Clark. 2024 will see an exhibition with Jimmy Robert, in which the artist engages with Fulda’s booming jazz scene in the 1950s. 2025 is dedicated to the realization of the unrealized exhibition Yellow, which Franz Erhard Walther had conceived for the Galerie Junge Kunst in Fulda in 1965.
VILLA is a joint project by the Franz Erhard Walther Foundation and the City of Fulda
Franz Erhard Walther Foundation
Susanne Walther
Conception overall project, Artistic Director, Co-conception exhibition program
Julia Heldt
Research Associate
City of Fulda
Dr. Frank Verse
General Management
Franziska Schlemmer
Research Assistant, Coordination
Michél Kranz
Custodian
Lea Sporer
Educational projects
Organization of the exhibition
Judith Mader
Museologist, Museums of the City of Fulda
Daniel Bley
Workshop Manager, Museums of the City of Fulda
Michaela Zwergel
Freelance Conservator
Website
Design: Studio Manuel Raeder
Development: oioioi.io
Landing page: Franz Erhard Walther on the Piazza San Marco, Venice, returning from Greece,1960. Photo: unknown © FEW Foundation Archives
Images menu page: Franz Erhard Walther, VILLA NICE, 1958, Word Pictures, 1957–1958 / Five Pillow Strips with Four Bands 1963. Photo: Reiner Ruthenbeck / Franz Erhard Walther on the Piazza San Marco, Venice, returning from Greece,1960. Photo: unknown © FEW Foundation Archives / Eight Cushion Forms on a Rack, 1963. Photo: Reiner Ruthenbeck. Courtesy of the artist.
Collection Seng
In the summer of 1958, at the opening exhibition of the Junger Kunstkreis (Young Art Circle) co-founded by Franz Erhard Walther in Fulda, the art restorer Gisbert Seng (b. 1933) first encountered Walther’s work and shortly thereafter met the then nineteen-year-old artist.
In a context in which Walther’s works met with rejection and incomprehension, Gisbert Seng and his first wife, Helga Seng, were among the few with whom Walther could share his reflections on his own art and questions regarding art in general.
Together with Johanna Frieß, the Sengs were the only spectators at Walther’s 1962 Paper Concerto in Fulda; and in those years, the two couples would spend time together in the Rhön region, activating the first pieces of Walther’s First Work Set.
When the Walthers moved to New York in May 1967, Gisbert Seng safeguarded several important works which otherwise would have been lost. After the Walthers’ return from New York, Walther continuously gifted early works to the Sengs with the idea of forming a collection which would be shown in Fulda one day.
After living with and preserving the works for over fifty years with the support of Gisbert Seng’s second wife, Katharina Bongartz, the collection was entrusted by the Seng family to the Franz Erhard Walther Foundation in 2019 as a partial gift, with the wish that the works would be shown in Fulda, the place where most of them were created.