Max Ackermann

Banned from his profession by the National Socialists, he relocated to Lake Constance in 1936; his studio in Stuttgart and with it a majority of his early works were destroyed during a bombing raid in 1943. His works received public acclaim in the postwar years: besides numerous exhibitions, Ackermann was the guest of honour at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome in 1964 and received the Federal Cross of Merit in 1972, three years prior to his death. In his early and late work, Ackermann’s oeuvre is beholden to an abstract, constructivist approach. His intense occupation with music finds its expression in the paintings of the so-called “Klangzeichen” and in the principal of the counterpoint; in addition, the “Farbturm”, amongst others, represents a further recurring theme. The application of the colour blue attains the character of a leitmotif in his oeuvre.