Review
The 2005 exhibition Dieter Roth: Books was the first to be held in Hanover by the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation. It was followed by other exhibitions, featuring the works of artists including Yves Klein, Emil Nolde, Bernhard Luginbühl and Thomas Herbst, the North German impressionist. From the very beginning, care was taken to present the collection in all its diversity, whilst still shedding light on the myriad connections and interactions that shaped the artistic development of modernism.
Highlights include retrospectives of the work of Gabriele Münter and Dieter Roth – two artists with whom the founder of the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation, Jan A. Ahlers, was personally acquainted. The exhibition ZERO–Nouveau Réalisme also stands out for being the first to place both important artistic movements in comparative perspective; the exhibition’s opening was attended by Jacques Villeglé himself, nearly ninety years old at the time, who travelled from Paris especially for the occasion.
Autumn 2017 saw the first exhibition at the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation’s new location in Herford. Entitled Face and Mask: Role-Play in Portraiture, it featured around eighty objects that traced the development of portraiture throughout the twentieth century.