A large number of constructive currents developed after 1945 in southwest Germany, and to this day they have pointed the way and helped set the art agenda. The most important arenas were Stuttgart and Ulm, where the Kunstakademie and the Hochschule für Gestaltung founded on the Bauhaus model in 1953 developed into two outstanding centres for geometrical art. Through the acclaimed figures of Willi Baumeister and Max Bill as tutors, together with the Stuttgart-based graphic designer, painter and photographer Anton Stankowski, not only were the ideas of modernism revived but the tried and tested principles of constructivism were expanded. In this way, the practice of uniting art and design in one creative process began to flourish in the 1950s. The paintings of Georg Karl Pfahler and Winfred Gaul, for instance, reflected on the planarity of the picture support and its geometrical shape by means of a noticeably intense use of colour. And ultimately the serial method became a popular approach in the visual arts, as for instance in the work of Rolf-Gunter Dienst and Almir Mavignier.

This selection of works from the Marli Hoppe-Ritter Collection features paintings, works on paper, wall objects and a number of sculptures dating from the 1940s right up to the present.