2024: ABSTRACT FORMS AND ABSTRACTION

"Architecture, with its simplest forms, is rooted entirely in the functional. But it reaches beyond all levels of value into the realm of spiritual being, into the realm of the sensual, the sphere of pure art." (Mies van der Rohe, November 20, 1938, Chicago)

In Landhaus Lemke, abstraction and abstract forms are closely connected. Mies van der Rohe's Landhaus Lemke built in 1932/33 combines abstract forms and essential concepts in a prototype. The building takes the idea of a habitable house into the future, in which the bungalow was to become the epitome of an interweaving of architecture and garden. As a mature example of interwar modernism, the Lemke country house became the model for a new form of housing, which only became established as a residential model in the post-war period. Mies' work is characterized by the fact that it is always able to create a special spatial atmosphere through the strictness of the architectural language, the attention to detail and a concentration on the essentials. The exhibition program of the Mies van der Rohe House spans a wide range in 2024:

The exhibition dedicated to the Professor of Philosophy, Alois Riehl, will open on March 17. Riehl was Mies' first client.This will be followed on July 14 by the exhibition of the artistic painting and collage work of the Mecklenburg-based artist Andreas Barth, who builds his work on the basis of collected color card systems. The year ends with the imaginary color spaces of Leipzig painter David Schnell. The exhibition by David Schnell will open on December 8. In addition, two new issues will be published in the museum's publication series this year. Issue #10 is published on the occasion of the exhibition under the same title "Alois Riehl. The first builder of Mies" and contains texts by Fritz Neumeyer, Annette Dorgerloh and Clemens Alexander Wimmer.

It has now become a good tradition at the Mies van der Rohe House to dedicate a special exhibition project to the work of the architect Mies once a year. This time, the focus is on the architect's first work, built between 1908 and 1909. Newly discovered autochromes, an early method of color photography, show Riehl House and Garden from a new perspective. The idea of combining "man, architecture and nature on a higher level" was implemented in the design of Mies' Riehl House and culminated a little over twenty years later in Landhaus Lemke, where this idea has found its form in a way that is concentrated down to the essentials.

Andreas Barth's summer exhibition unites minimalist painting with a conceptual approach based on a passion for collecting color systems. In the exhibition, Barth's monochrome surface painting is combined with his collage work. A collection of breakfast trays with constructivist patterns from the sixties and seventies bears witness to the unbroken power of abstract forms in art as well as in everyday crafts. Intellectual abstraction, with its philosophical and literary ramifications, is reflected in the collections of colour patterns and colour cards. They reflect intellectual-abstract models of thought in their desire to systematize. Andreas Barth's artistic paintings and collections also aim at the core of philosophical theories. He seeks intellectual concentration in his work.

David Schnell's exhibition designs the world as a space. His paintings form color spaces that interweave three principles: Detail with depth space, color fields with crystalline splinters and, above all, central perspective combined with dream spaces. Abstract, cubist-inspired, often flying and condensing planar spatial elements fly through imaginary spatial images. Geometric forms suddenly encounter pictorial worlds and, as in dreams, painterly detail is combined with remembered associated abstractions.

Young people come to the Mies van der Rohe Haus! The MISCHI workshop will take place from 5.7. to 7.7. 2024. We are setting up a temporary architectural office named after Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, which will be called "MiSchi". Here we will build and discuss with renowned  architects such as Miriam Plünnecke (BBR, general renovation of the Altes Museum), Alexander Schwarz (David Chipperfield Architects), Ursula Steinhilber (SESA Architekten), Paul Kahlfeldt (Kahlfeldt Architekten), and Jörn Köppler (Köppler Türck Architekten). We visit the Altes Museum and the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche and can also view original drawings by Schinkel in the Kupferstichkabinett. For three days, the Mies van der Rohe House will become a building office to design bold images for the future.