The Emil Schumacher Museum in Hagen is showing the major solo exhibition "Rupprecht Geiger - Color - Light - Energy" until June 7, 2026: In cooperation with the Geiger Archive (Munich), the museum is presenting around 70 works from all of the artist's creative phases. It focuses on one of the most important representatives of European color field painting.
Visitors can experience a rare, indirect juxtaposition of Rupprecht Geiger and Emil Schumacher at Museumsplatz: two painter friends whose approaches to non-objective art after 1945 could hardly be more contrasting - on the one hand the expressive gestural, on the other the radical clarity of pure color.
Geiger (1908-2009), co-founder of the ZEN 49 group, is considered a pioneer of painting in which color itself becomes the sole subject. His consistent rejection of the representational, his reduction to simple geometric forms and his early use of chemically produced fluorescent pigments - particularly in the iconic red - had a lasting influence on the art of the second half of the 20th century. International recognition is evidenced by awards such as the Salomon Guggenheim Prize (1959) and the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen (1992) as well as participation in major biennials from Kassel to São Paulo.
The exhibition illustrates his artistic development: from early diary watercolors, landscapes and still lifes to gouaches and rarely shown drawings to the radiant color fields that impressively bundle Geiger's lifelong fascination for light, color and energy.
