Futurism Library Ingo Bartsch

In 2010, the Futurism Library of the art historian Ingo Bartsch was donated to the ZKM by his wife Eva Haustein-Bartsch. In the following three years, it was made accessible and placed in a separate area of the library.

The career of Ingo Bartsch

Ingo Bartsch, born in Berlin in 1943, studied art history, classical archaeology and Italian studies there. After a scientific voluntary service at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, he was curator at the Museum Bochum from 1979-1988. He then held the post of director at the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund until 2003. Here he conceived numerous exhibitions with renowned artists such as Mario Moronti, Jutta Freudenberger, Wilfried Hagebölling and Fabrizio Plessi. He curated thematic exhibitions on Informal Painting and with artists of Concrete Art. He also taught at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and supported the promotion of young art positions. He was a founding member of the »Chelsea Art Museum, New York« and the »Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto MART« in Italy, where he also served on the scientific committee. He also contributed to many publications, edited exhibition catalogs and wrote texts about the works of the collection of the Museum Ostwall. Since 2004 he has been active as a freelance art historian and art scholar.

The Futurism Library by Ingo Bartsch

One topic that had been on Ingo Bartsch's mind since his studies was Futurism, especially Italian Futurism. He earned his doctorate with a thesis on »Die Malerei des Futurismus in Italien und ihre Beziehung zum Faschismus« (The Painting of Futurism in Italy and its Relationship to Fascism) and in 2002 conceived the groundbreaking exhibition in Dortmund, »...auch wir Maschinen, auch wir mechanisiert! ...Die zweite Phase des italienischen Futurismus 1915-1945« (...we too machines, we too mechanized! ...The Second Phase of Italian Futurism 1915-1945). A second publication, a complete account of Italian Futurism 1904-1944, could not be realized due to his sudden death in 2007. As part of this research, he built up an extensive library of approximately 1,000 titles, which is now part of the ZKM library collection. In addition to books, the collection contains brochures, offprints and articles, posters, document folders, music and video cassettes, CDs and LPs. It is arranged separately and its content is based on the existing in-house classification system. The focal points of the collection are the titles of the artists and the thematic exhibition catalogs of Futurism, but art historical literature and literature on the historical background of Futurism are also extensively represented.

The collection can be searched via the library's online catalog, where it can be accessed as a special collection.