The catalog is published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders (24.03.-25.08.2024).

Otto Freundlich (1878-1943), an important pioneer of modernism, has not yet received the attention he deserves. He was seen early on in artistic circles, but his name is still not familiar to the general public. One of his works has the shocking popularity of having been featured as the cover motif on the catalog for the Entartete Kunst exhibition in 1937. The artist behind it remains largely unknown, although the strands of German history are tragically bundled together in his person.

Martin NoëI (1954-2010) is known for his large-format non-representational woodcuts, whose 'motifs' he derived from the visible world of everyday life. He followed outlines and contours, exposed lines and created a fascinating world of abstract forms for the viewer. The interplay of line and surface was to dominate his high-contrast hand prints for years. In 2001, NoëI began to study Otto Freundlich's life and work intensively. This fascination became a passion: in the period up to 2010, he created around two hundred works that explicitly refer to Otto Freundlich.

The catalog is published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders (24.03.-25.08.2024) and brings the work of both artists into a dialogue for the first time. The publication is also intended to highlight Otto Freundlich's position as an artist, man and idealist, whose outstanding significance lies not only in his wide-ranging oeuvre, but also in his visionary writings and his life and tragic death, which brought people and ideas together.