Paintings and works on paper

The Bundesbank’s art collection, having grown over a number of decades at many points across Germany, is presented at various locations. The wide range of artistic focuses at these locations have contributed to the variety of the collection, allowing visitors to make exciting discoveries throughout the bank.

At the Bank’s Central Office in Frankfurt am Main, for instance, the viewer will come across works by big names in representative and abstract painting such as Georg Baselitz, Günter Fruhtrunk, Rupprecht Geiger, K.O. Götz, Karl Hofer, Jörg Immendorff, Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Emil Schumacher. In Hamburg there is a selection of paintings by Eduard Bargheer. The Bundesbank’s offices in eastern Germany, on the other hand, tend to have more works by artists from the eastern federal states.

Karl Hofer, The contemplative woman, 1936

Even though it was created in 1936, from today’s perspective "Die Sinnende" [The contemplative woman] appears as if the huge dislocations of the following decade were already being depicted in the portrait of this young woman

Karl Hofer, The contemplative woman, 1936
Ida Kerkovius, Composition, 1955

Ida Kerkovius, born in 1879, belongs to the first generation of female artists who, albeit under difficult conditions and against much resistance, received professional training and were able to steadily pursue an artistic career thereafter.

Ida Kerkovius, Composition, 1955
K. O. Götz, Jan 1955, 1955

Karl Otto Götz, the only German member of the international COBRA group, was one of the few artists who attempted to provide theoretical underpinning and gain public attention for the abstract gestural painting of the post-war period.

K. O. Götz, Jan 1955, 1955
Rupprecht Geiger, 429/65, 1965

A picture by Rupprecht Geiger provokes an immediate response: the force of the colour is well-nigh overpowering. This shade of red, which the artist intersperses time and again with hints of pink or orange, triggers associations of peril and passion.

Rupprecht Geiger, 429/65, 1965
Cornelia Schleime, Woman with dog, 1994/95

A young woman with her dog looks out, keenly and slightly provocatively, from the sketched frame of a locket. Clearly based on a photograph, the portrait appears artificial and as from another age, mainly as a result of the distortion of colours.

Cornelia Schleime, Woman with dog, 1994/95
Thomas Scheibitz, Untitled, 1995–96

The feeling of living in a world full of interchangeable personal narratives and uniform biographies is a commonplace in modernism. Not only is almost every region on earth characterised by identical consumer possibilities and choices; the general principles, aspirations, desires and dreams of humans across the globe have, moreover, long since been standardised by the pervasiveness of media communication.

Thomas Scheibitz, Untitled, 1995–96