Mies v obraze - výstava ve vile Tugendhat

The exhibition is held on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886). The title "Mies in the Picture" works with a dual meaning: it refers to collages and photomontages as a medium through which Mies is present in the exhibition, and at the same time to the Czech idiom “to be in the picture” – to have an overview and understand the context. The exhibition offers insight into how Mies thought about architecture and how he formulated his ideas through visual studies and conceptual projects.
The techniques of collage and photomontage accompanied Mies's work throughout his career. From the first photomontages for the competition for the Bismarck Memorial in Bingen am Rhein in 1910 to the visionary project of a glass skyscraper on Berlin’s Friedrichstraße in 1922, and up to the collages of Mies’s final realization, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin from the 1960s.
The seven exhibited works come from Mies’s time in the United States, from 1938 to 1969. The collages from his American period are not merely working sketches. Although they may have served to present designs to clients, they can also be perceived as autonomous visual works made from a variety of materials. They combine perspective drawings, wooden veneers, landscape photographs, and reproductions of works by artists whom Mies admired – for example, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Wassily Kandinsky, or Aristide Maillol. Through these layers, they precisely articulate proportions, the depth of space, and the relationship of the building to the surrounding landscape, while also reminding one of Mies’s connection to the European avant-garde, particularly with Constructivism, Dada, and De Stijl movements.
All selected collages capture the view from the interior through generous glazed walls towards the landscape. Just like Mies's realizations, it is evident here that architecture is not an isolated object but a means of relationship between man and his surroundings. In his designs, Mies does not seek dominance over nature but aims to create a spatial framework in which the landscape can naturally enter the interior of the house. Studies for the Resor House in Wyoming, the Museum for a Small City, the administrative building of the Bacardi company in Cuba, the Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt, and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin all work with a similar spatial principle that is characteristic of the Tugendhat villa. The glazed surface here both blurs and precisely delineates the boundary between the interior and the exterior. Although no collage of the Brno villa was created, the curatorial selection of works consciously emphasizes the connection to the location of the exhibition.
This lesser-known part of Mies's work has already been focused on by authors such as Phyllis Lambert, Andres Lepik, Barry Berdoll, and Martino Stierli in their texts. However, it was first comprehensively presented in the exhibition Mies van der Rohe: The Collages from the Museum of Modern Art in 2016–2017, prepared mainly by Brigitte Franzen and Andreas Beitin for the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen and subsequently the Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt. It was accompanied by an extensive catalog that became an important reference source for further research.
The exhibited works are presented as high-quality prints from the original templates.

Authors: Michal Kolář, Barbora Benčíkova, Veronika Svobodová
Study and Documentation Center – Tugendhat Villa (SDC-VT), Museum of the City of Brno
Architectural and Artistic Solutions: Atelier Zidlicky
Language Proofreading: Neli Hejduk
Translation: Stephan von Pohl
Digital Reproduction of Collages: The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala Archives; Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / bpk-Bildagentur
Photography: David Židlický, Vladimír Buček – NPÚ-ÚOP Brno