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| Diamonds
and Bars. The Art of the Amish Quilts from the Schlumberger Collection March 30 – June 17, 2007 >> The life style of the Amish, who seeking religious freedom fled Europe for Pennsylvania, the Midwest and Canada, is the diametrical opposite of the American Way of Life. The quilts were precisely the only jewelry and the only colorful elements in their farmhouses. The patterns are the product of a strict composition featuring few basic elements, made in opulent intensive colors, frequently daringly combined. The colors and the geometry of these surfaces are given yet another aesthetic level by the stitching proper, the act of quilting, generating light effects and three-dimensional reliefs that caused the quilting lines in the soft backing. The spectrum ranges from the large quilts exude a radiant vitality, an intense expressive force, a monumental feel and plain elegance, via the clarity and straightforward directness of countless rowed patterns to the complex patterned pieces with their illusion of three-dimensionality. The Amish quilt makers were highly imaginative in how they varied a relatively narrow repertoire of patterns, defined by strict traditions. The otherwise free design of the quilts was subject to a greater order that permeated the entire lives of the Amish people. Although this “order”, which relied on literal exegesis of the Bible, entailed the rejection of all vanity and personal subjugation to the community, under such ostensibly inhospitable conditions, far from the art world of the day, highly expressive works arose that stand out for their great aesthetic audacity. In terms of formal reduction and abstraction, they seem to embody the search for the elementary. In close interaction with the high-profile collection of contemporary free art assembled by her partner Friedrich E. Rentschler (the FER Collection) over the last 15 years Maria Schlumberger has established one of the world’s highest quality collections on Amish quilts in cooperation with gallerists Eva and Peter Ziegler. Today, it boasts almost 100 items and is thus one of the largest and most diverse collections, too. Die Neue Sammlung – the State Museum of Applied Art and Design in Munich – is now for the first time showcasing a selection of works chosen together with the collector – and displaying them in truly the right venue, in the context of the Pinakothek der Moderne, under whose roof four different museums bring together in a trans-disciplinary nature the full range of the arts. Book in English and German. 216 pages with countless
colored illustrations. With essays by Laura Fisher, New York, among
others. Photographs by Rainer
Viertlböck. Design by Silke Nalbach. EUR 64.80.
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