Explain to me, love!

Love is probably the strongest and most intimate feeling that we can feel and that significantly guides and steers our actions. We all feel love and are loved! In art, feelings of inner connection and affection have always found and still find expression. This is evidenced not only by the many different depictions of lovers presented in the exhibition: from melancholy togetherness to cheerful togetherness to frivolous rapprochement. Physical love, desire, is particularly thematized in the mythological tales of antiquity. To this day, artists illustrate the allusive texts with their pictures and like to draw on the centuries-old material.

Love relationships also play a central role in religious stories. Love for God and the love of God are repeatedly put to the test. Depictions of the Madonna often show Mary and Jesus in a static juxtaposition. Yet there are also artistic creations that are intensely emotional and make the pain of inevitable loss palpable.

Secular depictions also bear witness to the boundless and unconditional love between parents and children. Moreover, artists also document the rituals surrounding love relationships: in a painting of a wedding party or with an amusing sculpture of a bridal couple.

The visual arts discovered numerous other moving moments in love relationships for themselves: emotionally touching are pictures that tell of failed, tragic love relationships. For example, everyone knows the unhappy outcome of the story of Romeo and Juliet. Death irretrievably takes away what is more important than anything else in life.

The exhibition shows through numerous exhibits from the large in-house collection of the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss, how varied love is expressed. Everyone will recognize themselves here!