The German-French couple Franz and Nadia van der Grinten opened the Van der Grinten Gallery in Cologne in 2002. Their program includes photography, painting, drawing, works on paper, sculpture by German and international young and established artists.
Driven by a desire to renew the historic collaboration between their collections, the Musée d’arts de Nantes and the Frac Pays de la Loire are jointly organizing an exhibition that will take shape in both institutions.
Entitled “Plants and People,” the exhibition juxtaposes historical and contemporary works—photographs, drawings, sculptures, paintings—that explore the place of living things in our relationship with the world. Two complementary approaches are pursued: plants at the Musée d’arts de Nantes and animals at the Frac in Carquefou.
Over time, some of the paintings depicting Étretat have acquired an iconic status and become part of the collective imaginary.
The museum, in partnership with the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, present an exhibition devoted to representations of Étretat, based on four major works held in the collections of the two institutions, all of which were painted in Étretat: two Waves by Gustave Courbet (1869-1870), and two paintings by Claude Monet, The Luncheon (1868-1869) and Rough sea, Etretat (1883).
These works testify of the central role played by this village, located on the Normandy coast, in the development of new pictorial languages over the course of the 19th century. Through a selection of paintings, drawings, photographs and archives, the exhibition traces the story of the discovery of Étretat by artists, painters and writers alike, and highlights its construction as a mythical landscape, from Eugène Isabey to Henri Matisse.
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We are delighted to begin the year 2026 by welcoming the PArt Foundation from Hamburg as our guest at the Van der Grinten Galerie. In a close curatorial collaboration with foundation founder Rene S. Spiegelberger we have brought together a representative selection of works by renowned contemporary artists to present in our beautiful Cologne gallery space.
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We are delighted to invite you to Elger Esser’s fourth solo exhibition at the Van der Grinten Gallery. For this occasion, the artist is presenting twelve previously unseen works created between 2024 and 2025, which continue the development of his characteristic visual universe; a universe in which a strange feeling of timelessness prevails, captivating the viewer as if in a dream or vague memories.
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Lorenzo Pompa’s main theme is the conditio humana, the readily observable horrifying human tendency towards violence, unrestraint, brutality and excesses. But also other evident human qualities, such as greatness of spirit, heroism and a yearning for beauty. To explore the field of tension between these poles Lorenzo Pompa has developed allegories of biomorphic bodies that appear to act according to the laws of their human psyche.
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We are delighted to announce the first solo exhibition in our gallery space of Cologne painter Heiner Binding. Since the 1980s the artist has pursued a path that has produced a dense and consistent body of work. We are showing the most recent works from this oeuvre.