Living with Art: The Hoffmann Collection

Enlarge image

Lawrence Weiner, MILK AND HONEY TAKEN FAR FAR AWAY / MILCH UND HONIG WEIT WEIT WEGGEBRACHT, 1994

(© Sammlung Hoffmann )

It can only be viewed on Saturdays: the private Hoffmann Collection has been based in Berlin since 1997. Since then the Collection, which is located in a former sewing-machine factory, has been open to the public once a week.

“I insist that this is not a museum,” says Erika Hoffmann-Koenige assertively. “We never collected for the public, only for ourselves. It is a lived-in collection.” It can only be viewed on Saturdays. Then visitors who have registered beforehand for a guided tour are given a warm welcome. For years now the Hoffmann Collection has no longer been an insider tip. It is one of the first private collections of contemporary art in Germany that allows the public to share it in this exclusive way. Its domicile is to be found in the immediate vicinity of the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin-Mitte, a tourist hotspot, but it is tucked away in the quieter yards of the Sophie-Gips-Höfe. Rolf and Erika Hoffmann bought the yellow brick building of a former sewing-machine factory, derelict since the fall of the Wall, in 1994 from the Treuhand (trust), converted it into flats to rent and working spaces and found the ideal surroundings to live in with their acquired artworks.

Enlarge image

Gerhard Richter, Rot, 1982

(© Sammlung Hoffmann)

Since 1997, each year in July, they have “rearranged” their collection which is spread over two floors, encompassing a total of 1,400 square metres. They affirm their own preferences and are not interested in assembling famous names, although these are, of course, also represented. Thus one encounters alongside some unusual exhibits – for example from Gerhard Richter, Marcel Broodthaers, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Mike Kelley, Nan Goldin – impressive works of lesser-known and younger artists, not only from Western Europe, but also meanwhile from Eastern Europe, not only from America but also from Asia. The artworks are not displayed in a chic, styled ambience. The Hoffmanns have preserved the character of the old factory. The loft-like rooms are often only whitewashed, here and there remnants of paint and traces of production have been left. Whereby a superimposed glass-fronted room with a view over the cityscape has been reserved for private use only.

On the exterior the bullet holes and other ravages of history have not been cleaned away, and installations such as Thomas Locher’s diptych Entweder/Oder (Either/Or) are by no means overbearing. Inside the building the works have a lot of room to breathe. There are no labels to establish hierarchies or to distract. On request visitors whose curiosity has been aroused may receive a list of the artworks - but not until the end of the tour. However, a glass of water is readily available for all and sundry. Instead of dark-clad attendants on the alert for visitors stepping up too closely to the artworks, well-educated, multi-lingual young people lead the way through the vast, sparsely furnished rooms. The exclusively private rooms are taboo. Erika Hoffmann-Koenige, who has carried on with the collection since the death of her husband eight years ago, wishes to give impulses on the effects and significance of the daily association with art.

In one room is a white piano on which her grandchildren can practice. The library offers a place of refuge as a house within a house. The wall-sized rectangle consisting of many brass signs carefully screwed into one another in the collector’s office – a work by the artist Gretchen Faust on the Passion of St John – will once again be disassembled into separate pieces and packed away in fine small boxes when the “rearrangement” takes place. This is what Erika Hoffmann-Koenige calls the annual changes in selection from the collection.

Enlarge image

Works by Georg Herold

(© Sammlung Hoffmann)

Leitmotif for this year’s “rearrangement” is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall: “Dreams and nightmares, utopia and dystopia” are then to be fathomed in various works including those of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Astrid Klein, Georg Herold, Miriam Cahn, Christian Boltanski, Ernesto Neto.

In the beginning the contact to the artists was the most important aspect. “We were not so very interested in objects back then, but in ideas,” says Erika Hoffmann-Koenige as she recalls the heady atmosphere of the 1960s when she bought her first work: a signal by the Greek kinetics sculptor Takis (1968). There followed objects by the Zero group which exerted a decisive influence on her aims.

The Collection was recently on view for the first time outside its own rooms in the Lipsiusbau of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden – and this for a special reason. Before the Hoffmanns moved from Cologne to Berlin, they had had the idea in the early 1990s of setting up a privately funded art hall in the “baroque city.” A friend of theirs, the American artist Frank Stella, designed a provocative architectural model: organically-shaped, coloured pavilions for a park-like site opposite the famous Dresden Zwinger Museum. Although, after vehement discussions, the city council decided in favour of the project, it was thwarted by the then Premier of the state of Saxony. This time Erika Hoffmann-Koenige received a “carte blanche” and used it for subtle dialogues between the over 60 artworks on display. It focuses on rules and system by means of which the attempt is made to explain the world, its violation and neglect – an overall area of tension within the Collection.

The exhibition catalogue informs on its 40-year history with stopovers in Mönchengladbach, Cologne and Berlin. After the Hoffmanns had sold their fashion company van Laack in 1985, they concentrated not only on private collecting but also engaged in art outreach and, for example, initiated the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst (Prize of the National Gallery for Young Art).

Written by art historian, freelance journalist and author Sigrun Hellmich.

Translation: Heather Moers

Copyright: Goethe-Institut