BIELEFELD.- Due to space restrictions, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld can rarely show its entire collection, although the relatively young collection — founded on classic modern art and expanded to include international contemporary art — is of indisputably high quality. The collection, comprised of approximately 500 paintings, 200 sculptures, and 4500 prints, features classic modern masterpieces by Max Beckmann, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Edvard Munch, Man Ray, and Emil Nolde, as well as Pop Art and Surrealism, masterpieces by Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz, while some of the international contemporary artists include Marlene Dumas, Jonathan Meese, and Gregor Schneider. Thanks to the extent of its collection, the Kunsthalle can provide visitors with a unique tour through twentieth- and twenty-first-century art history.

As part of its series of exhibitions of important museum collections of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn presented »The Unknown Bielefeld Collection« between January and March of this year. Inspired by its success — a total of 31000 visitors saw the show — the collection is now returning to its home at the Kunsthalle, and will go on display on all three floors of the building — an exhibition as extensive as it is rare. Friedrich Meschede, the new director of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, will oversee the organization of the collection’s approximately one hundred masterpieces.