Waving banners, rectangular lattice windows and red and yellow clinker bricks announce it from afar: The Ludwig Forum for International Art is a place for encounters; encounters with exemplary Bauhaus architecture as well as encounters with international, contemporary art.
The home of Peter and Irene Ludwig's collection invites guests on a journey of discovery through the decades, styles and eras of five different cultures in a converted Aachen factory building. It presents its collection of more than 3,000 works in thematically organized temporary exhibitions, which sometimes focus on artists from Central and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America and Asia, and sometimes break down trends and developments in international art history.
Works from the pop art scene
Where the Emil Brauer company once produced up to 10,000 umbrellas a day between 1928 and 1988, art fans can now approach works from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary in hall-like corridors. Works from the "Eastern Bloc" as well as Chinese and Cuban art form a focal point of the Ludwig Forum in Aachen. Works from the American pop art scene are also at the heart of the museum's inventory. Peter and Irene Ludwig were among the first collectors to take an interest in works by later style icons such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close and Duane Hanson.
The first presentation of the young American movement by the collector couple in 1968 was a great success that was to have far-reaching consequences. The couple's groundbreaking show led to the founding of the "Neue Galerie - Sammlung Ludwig" in Aachen, which over time developed into today's Ludwig Forum. After several relocations, the art treasure came to its current location near the picturesque Kurgarten in 1991. Although parts of the collection are now represented in over 20 museums around the world, the museum on the western edge of North Rhine-Westphalia forms the starting and anchor point of the extensive art collection.
