Geometry – Perception – Empathy
Lun Tuchnowski in the Würth Collection
23 January to 24 October 2021

With the retrospective exhibition Geometry – Perception – Empathy. Lun Tuchnowski in the Würth Collection, we are honoring an artist, who has contributed in many ways to the Würth Collection and who had been connected to it like no other. Lun Tuchnowski (1946– 2018) was a master class student, assistant to and later a friend of renowned Danish iron sculptor Robert Jacobsen (1912–1993), developing into an artist of his own right on a par with Jacobsen. In the late 1980s, Tuchnowski supported Jacobsen’s sculptural designs for the forecourt of Museum Würth at the head office of Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG in Künzelsau, and his own works have continued to enrich the wide selection of contemporary sculptures at Würth ever since.

Tuchnowski also influenced the visual presence of the Würth Collection at home and abroad over decades, working as exhibition architect and creative consultant for the collection. The exhibition traces the different stages of his impressive overall œuvre in more than 200 different works. It puts the spotlight on the main themes Tuchnowski followed in his sculptural works, focusing especially on the different aesthetic designs and variety of different media, while touching on the creative concepts that revolved mainly around the individual architectural setting and space.

As a sculptor, Tuchnowski — who lived in Munich for many years and also kept a studio there — combined two different sculptural understandings of the 20th century in his works: Geometric shapes and figurative shapes form a synthesis. The basic materials in his works are mainly aluminium, zinc, steel and bronze, but also include wood, concrete, plastic, and gypsum in many different forms and designs. Tuchnowski’s works show an impressive, but fragile balance between calm, strength and dynamics.

For the first time, our exhibition is also displaying early paintings and a remarkable selection of drawings from the artist’s estate that add their own poetic style to Tuchnowski’s rich œuvre.

To help visitors better understand Tuchnowski’s working processes and his intellectual cosmos, a reproduction of the original studio will be integrated into the exhibition to illustrate the entire context of his works, including many aspects that go beyond the artist’s mere work. Seen from this perspective, the studio resembles the archives of a mysterious encyclopedia of things.

A catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition, featuring many color photographs and insightful contributions as well as many supporting texts by the artist’s contemporaries that make the artist come alive in many often very personal accounts and recollections.

Works on Display