Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
February 2025
The Kröller-Müller Museum is delighted to announce the acquisition of Ohne Titel (1969) by Palermo. The addition of this sculptural painting by Palermo makes the Kröller-Müller the first and only museum in the Netherlands where visitors can become acquainted with his work. The purchase was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund, the public fund for visual arts and cultural heritage and the Rembrandt Association (thanks in part as well to the A. Quist-Rütter Fund, Helze Fund and the Fund for Post-War and Contemporary Art) and participants of The Friends Lottery.
Ohne Titel is a key piece within Palermo's oeuvre, a prototype for his later experiments with the triangle, combining two elements: an unfathomably deep blue triangle and a triangle with a mirrored surface. Ohne Titel is a so-called “object painting,” a special group within Palermo’s oeuvre. They are often relatively small, clearly hand-made paintings with an unusual shape, often consisting of several parts.
Benno Tempel, director of the Kröller-Müller Museum notes that “Ohne Titel is a highly desirable and long-awaited addition to the collection of abstract and conceptual art in the Kröller-Müller Museum.” Despite Palermo's art-historical importance, no painting by him had yet been included in a public art collection in the Netherlands, while many of Palermo's contemporaries, who also studied under Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, such as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Imi Knoebel, are already are.
Ohne Titel is now on display in the museum's permanent collection galleries. Initially, it will be shown together with a work by Donald Judd, in the company of paintings by Piet Mondriaan and Bart van der Leck.
Read more at de Volksrant.