Mission Statement
The non-profit Kienzle Art Foundation is dedicated to highlighting and promoting marginalized, forgotten, and little-known artistic positions from the 1960s to the present day in Germany, Europe, and the USA. Its aim is to correct omissions and complete art history. Artists whose overlooked work has a well-founded claim to be noticed and included in the discourse are offered a space and a platform.
The Kienzle Art Foundation shapes the Jochen Kienzle Collection, a private art collection, as a lively space for reflection and makes it available to the public as an educational resource. It stimulates current public and academic discourse with socially and scientifically relevant impulses—independent of art-historical hierarchies or market criteria. Free from market interests, the small non-profit organization aims to open up spaces for multi-perspective, critical thinking and proactive, inclusive action. It seeks to create new approaches to art that encourage people to reflect and inspire them to break away from old patterns and think in new ways.
A strong driving force behind the Kienzle Art Foundation is international exchange about art. The creation, cultivation, and development of international relationships is intended to contribute to mutual understanding and joint action. The foundation understands art as a universal language on the one hand and as an identifier of cultures and mentalities on the other. This makes it possible to work with art across borders in a way that creates added value for all involved—primarily the foundation, the artists, and the audience. With its special focus on US art, the Kienzle Art Foundation is a reliable partner for American artists outside the culture-hostile political system.
Vision
The Kienzle Art Foundation believes in an open, dynamic art history in which uncomfortable, provocative, and visionary positions from the past and present serve as inspiration for new generations in the future—beyond the mainstream, but at the center of social relevance. By providing new access to intellectually challenging and complex art, the foundation aims to become an internationally recognized point of contact for artists, scholars, and curators. High-quality art exhibitions with a low-threshold educational program are the basis for ensuring that also other target groups and the general public perceive the foundation as an established institution.
