Exhibitions

Eclectic Affinities Hamid Zénati and the Collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst

28 September 2024 – 12 January 2025

Hamid Zénati, Untitled, Undated, Photo: © Hamid Zénati Estate, Photo: Maximilian Geuter

Eclectic Affinities brought the extensive work of the artist Hamid Zénati, who was born in Constantine (Algeria) in 1944 and died in Munich in 2022, into dialogue with various objects from the collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst. With his all-over stencil technique, Zénati developed a distinct formal language and created compositions that were both playful and powerful. His paintings on textiles, ceramics, and furniture, as well as his approach to photography, challenge established boundaries and genres by moving between the realms of design, art, and interior design.

Zénati’s work resonates with the museum’s central questions: What is applied art today? Where is the boundary with the visual arts? Do our learned hierarchies, categories of knowledge, and viewing habits do justice to a diverse world? Hamid Zénati was inspired by a wide variety of subjects, cultures, art movements, techniques, and media. His everyday life in Munich, his second home since the 1960s, influenced him as much as his travels through the Algerian desert, India, Indonesia, and Cuba. His works, which he always carried with him in suitcases so that he could work anywhere during his journeys, are the expression of a traveler between worlds, an artist who strove for freedom his entire life.

In nine chapters the exhibition focused on different aspects, enabling a new perspective on the practice of an individualist and autodidact whose observations of social, cultural, and artistic movements organically flowed into his work. It also elicited unconventional approaches to the collection objects selected by the curators in relation to Zénati’s work. Loans from the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art and the Walther Collection (Neu-Ulm/New York) created further points of reference.

Curators: Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka, Anna Schneider

Hamid Zénati, Untitled, Undated, Photo: © Hamid Zénati Estate, Photo: Maximilian Geuter

You can download the exhibition booklet here.


About Hamid Zénati

The artist hosing down one of his paintings on the terrace of his studio in Algiers, late 1980s, Photographer unknown

Hamid Zénati was born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1944. After briefly working as a teacher in Algeria, he studied German and French translation at the Institute of Languages and Interpreters in Munich, Germany, 1965–1970, and subsequently photography at the former Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich, 1971–1973. He began his career as a translator and self-taught artist in Algiers in the 1970s. Due to the challenging sociopolitical conditions Zénati faced both in German and his home country, he lived between the two nations for many years. His artistic practice ranged from painting and textile, fashion, and interior design, to ceramics and photography, always driven by an anarchic impetus to create. During his six-decade career, he produced over one thousand artworks. Zénati passed away in Munich, Germany, in 2022.

While the artist remained mostly unknown during his lifetime, his rich practice, which challenges the established boundaries between styles, genres, as well as fine and applied arts, has been recently rediscovered and was presented in exhibitions such as Hamid Zénati: Two Steps at a Time, Nottingham Contemporary (2024); Soft Power, Das Minsk, Potsdam (2024); and Hamid Zénati: All-Over, Haus der Kunst München (2023). Eclectic Affinities at Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt (2024/25) was the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work to date.


With artworks by

Abbé Pierre
Achtziger, Hans
Aicher, Otto »Otl«
Allora & Calzadilla
Ammann, Judith
anthologie quartett
Arad, Ron
Attia, Kader
Aucoc, Louis
Austin, Oliver L.
Barrada, Yto
Baumhekel, Thomas
Berriolo, Elena
Bersz, Andrzej (with Wolfgang Rang and Wojtek »Wojciech« Bersz)
Bersz, Wojtek »Wojciech« (with Wolfgang Rang and Andrzej Bersz)
Billeci, Andre G.
Blume, Anna
Blume, Bernhard
Bontjes van Beek, Jan
Bourgoin, Jules
Boutang, Pierre-André (with Claude Lévi-Strauss)
Brevern, Renate von
Broekstra, Jan (with Sander Luske)
Buhs, Bussi
Bustelli, Franz Anton
Cahn, Leo Naftoli (LEOMAT)
Césaire, Aimé
Chihuly, Dale
Cigler, Václav
Cobden-Sanderson, Thomas J.
Coleman, Robert
Constantinidis, Joanna
Cooke, Gordon
Crowley, Jill
Dahlström, Preben (with Bent J. Muus and Arne Schiötz)
De Morgan, William
Denz, Margit
Dörfer, Barbara
Drohan, Walter
Durin, Bernard
E. R. Nele
Eberhardt, Isabelle
Eiermann, Egon
Eisch, Erwin
Eitzenhöfer, Ute
El Warcha
Fanon, Frantz
Feibleman, Dorothy
Felgenträger, Gabriela
Fiebig, Wilfried
Fosso, Samuel
Gänsslen, Carola
Gaunt, Pamela
Gemma, Luca
GG Vybe
Gilroy, Paul
Gough, Rowena

Grau, Otto
Grundig AG
Haeckel, Ernst
Hamm, Ulrike
Heesen, Willem
Herman, Samuel J.
Hesse, Ruth
Hideo, Ukai
Hoffmann, Josef Franz Maria
Hofmann, Lotte
Holl, Steven
Jaussen, Antonin
Jones, Owen
Jubei, Ando (Workshop)
Kändler, Johann Joachim
Kath, Jan
Keïta, Seydou
Kerstan, Horst
Kersten, Paul
Kippenberg, Heidi
Kirchner, Michael
Kirchner, Nikolaus
Knupper, Friedrich
Kramer, Ferdinand
Kröhnke, Anka
Kuhn, Beate
Laviani, Ferruccio
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (with Pierre-André Boutang)
Lorenzen, Bärbel
Lurçat, Jean
Luske, Sander (with Jan Broekstra)
Maison Martin Margiela
Mankiewicz, Jack
Mari, Enzo
Mariscal, Javier
Marsland, Sally
Matisse, Henri
Maurer, Ingo
Mendini, Alessandro
Moje-Wohlgemuth, Isgard
Motz-Schönhaber, Ursula
Müller-Hellwig, Alen
Murakami, Takashi
Murkudis, Kostas
Muus, Bent J. (with Preben Dahlström)
Myers, Joel Philip
Ndiritu, Grace
Newson, Marc
Nike
Odundo, Magdalene Anyango Namakhiya
Ohme, Irmtraud
Ojeikere, J. D. ’Okhai
Olabuenaga, Adrian
Panton, Verner
Pasquier, Nathalie du (with Ettore Sottsass)
Penck, A. R.
Pesce, Gaetano
Petri, Trude
Pietsch, Brigitte
Racinet, Albert Charles Auguste

Rang, Wolfgang (with Wojtek »Wojciech« Bersz and Andrzej Bersz)
Rapp, Uli
Rashid, Karim
Recknagel, Nadja
Redlich, Rayah
Reulecke, Tabea
Rietveld, Gerrit
Ringseis, Franz
Rösing, Michael
Roojen, Pepin van (with Sebastian Viebahn)
Rosenthal
Ruckenbrod, Käthe
Sander, Jil
Sangorski, Francis Longinus (with George Sutcliffe)
Sarri, Alessio (with Matteo Thun-Hohenstein)
Sato, Kazuko
Sauty, Alfred de
Scheer, Eva
Schimmel, Heidrun
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich
Schiötz, Arne (with Preben Dahlström)
Schneckendorf, Josef Emil
Schwotzer, Ines
Scott Brown, Denise (with Robert Venturi)
Senghor, Léopold Sédar
Shire, Peter
Sieber-Fuchs, Verena
Sieger, Dieter
Simpson, Peter
Sottsass, Ettore
Storr-Britz, Hildegard
Storr, James
Sutcliffe, George (with Francis Longinus Sangorski)
Swatch
Teunissen van Manen, Mathijs (LEOMAT)
Thun-Hohenstein, Matteo (with Alessio Sarri)
Tomasi, Henriette
Toshiro, Ota
Valentin, Karl
Venturi, Robert
Viebahn, Sebastian (with Pepin van Roojen)
Walter, Bert
Walther, Paul
Warlamis, Heide
Weiss-Weingart, Ebbe
Wewerka, Stefan
Willbrand, Carola
Wippermann, Andrea
Witt, Guntrud »Rud«
Wittek, Victoria
Yoshimoto, Kamon
Yu-Ichi (Inoue Yūichi)
Zeischegg, Walter
Zénati, Halim
Zénati, Hamid
Zięta, Oskar
Zorzi, Alberto
Zweite, Armin

as well as other unknown and anonymous persons.


Spotify Playlist

The Frankfurt DJ collective GG VYBE has created a Spotify playlist with music that inspired Hamid Zénati during his work for the exhibition Eclectic Affinities. Hamid Zénati and the Collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst.

Spotify is a free music streaming service that allows you to legally stream songs or podcasts. You can use Spotify on your PC, smartphone or tablet by downloading the Spotify software and creating a free account.

About GG VYBE:
The Frankfurt collective GG VYBE is much more than just a group of seven DJs – they are pioneers of a new era in the club scene. A club scene that is characterized by a passion for music, inclusion, diversity and solidarity. They play diverse sounds and genres and, as organizers and cultural-political actors, they are also actively committed to a progressive urban and club culture. GG VYBE impressively demonstrate how the foundation of music creates a space that offers warmth, cohesion, support and security.

Foto/Photo: Sevda Rekling

You can find the playlist here.


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