Image: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart will hold a curator-led tour examining Adolf Hölzel’s role in the development of modern art in Stuttgart, alongside works by Oskar Schlemmer and other artists associated with the city’s modernist scene. Titled ‘Adolf Hölzel & The Gang. Die Stuttgarter Moderne in der Sammlung der Staatsgalerie’, the tour will take place on 17 September 2026 at the museum in Stuttgart.
The one-hour programme will be led by Katharina Massing, a doctoral candidate and research associate at the Staatsgalerie. The museum describes the tour as an in-depth introduction to works by Hölzel, Schlemmer and their Stuttgart contemporaries, presented within the institution’s collection displays. The event is scheduled for 6:30pm to 7:30pm, with tickets priced at €7 and €3.50 for the reduced rate. Registration is required.
The tour places particular emphasis on Hölzel as a major but frequently overlooked forerunner of modernism. According to Massing’s description in the museum’s September programme, Hölzel was an influential teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, where he shaped successive generations of artists at the beginning of the 20th century. The programme links his teaching to the careers of Schlemmer, Willi Baumeister, Hermann Stenner and Ida Kerkovius.
Hölzel’s position as both artist and teacher provides the historical framework for the event. Rather than treating Stuttgart Modernism solely through its better-known individual figures, the tour is presented as an examination of the relationships between Hölzel and artists working in his orbit. The Staatsgalerie’s announcement specifies that the discussion will address Hölzel’s work as well as that of Schlemmer and their wider group of Stuttgart contemporaries.
The event forms part of a period of change for the Staatsgalerie’s presentation of modern art. The museum says that its holdings of classical modernism—including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Schlemmer—have international standing. The collection is scheduled to remain on view in its established arrangement in the Stirling Building only until 11 October 2026, after which the galleries will be comprehensively reconceived in preparation for energy-related building renovation.
The renovation has already affected works connected with the museum’s Stuttgart modernism holdings: the monumental Hölzel glass windows in the ground-floor foyer of the older building have been removed, while the Schlemmer wall painting is due to be enclosed. From 19 February 2027, selected highlights of the classical modern collection are scheduled to appear at the Kunstgebäude am Schlossplatz under the title ‘Simply the Best!’ in a new context.
The curator-led tour on Hölzel and Stuttgart Modernism is scheduled for Thursday, 17 September 2026, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 30–32, Stuttgart.
