Over the past 25 years, Thomas Olbricht, born in 1948, chemist, doctor of medicine and endocrinologist, has put together one of the most extensive private collections in Europe. The collection encompasses works from the early 16th century all the way to the most recent contemporary art. The chief source of inspiration for his collecting was his great uncle, Karl Ströher, who maintained an interest in contemporary art even into his old age. The collection, which spans both genre and epoch, is shaped by the subjective choices of a passionate collector, whereby the desire to discover and understand human nature provides the central impetus. Existential themes such as Eros, death and transience form the key programmatic emphases of the Olbricht Collection.
The collection hosts a number of great names, such as John Currin, Eric Fischl, Franz Gertsch, Cindy Sherman, Marlene Dumas or Gerhard Richter that consort with new discoveries, such as Corinne von Lebusa, Tomoko Nagai, Rachel Goodyear or Jonas Burgert. The diversity of the names points to the multiplicity of artistic media contained in the collection: painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and the new media. Historical retrospectives of timeless, existential themes are combined with views of current, contemporary material. In so doing, discoveries and surprises are consciously taken into account, the works are designed to have a jarring effect and thus elicit new ways of looking at the world in the viewer.
If hitherto only sections of the collection have been on show in public institutions at irregular intervals, e.g. in the museum weserburg, Museum Folkwang and Museum Morsbroich, the Olbricht Collection has now found – alongside the WUNDERKAMMER OLBRICHT – a permanent home in the me Collectors Room. Three times per annum selected curators will stage shows in the exhibition rooms using parts of the Olbricht Collection likewise other international private collections. In this way and every bit in keeping with the collector’s vision, new perspectives on the eternal cycle of becoming and passing are duly created.
