The Minnesota Suite was created during Schumacher´s time as a visiting professor at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1967/68. It was first shown in the Lefebre Gallery, New York, in 1968, and after that in the Galérie de Montréal, in 1969. Some of the exhibited pieces retain their original framing - acrylic boxes made made by the artist in New York studio of fellow artist Walasse Ting (1929 - 2010).

The gouaches forming the Minnesota Suite constitute the beginning of a newly-found interest by Emil Schumacher in the material paper. The paper had been literally thrown at the artist during a walk through Minneapolis, and immediately captured his creative attention.
After some experimentation, Schumacher used paper from then on not only as a canvas for his gouaches and paintings, but folded, ripped and crumpled it in order to sound out the material´s three-dimensional uses in painting.

The gouaches gained a heightened physicalness, which had interested the artist early on, and which had found its first expression in the so-called "Tastobjekte" (tactile objects) from 1957. Paper continued to haunt the artist even after work on the Minnesota Suite was completetd; with knotted lengths of paper, the artist touched on the border between painting and scultpure. As with the tacticle objects of the late 1950s, though, Schumacher stuck with painting - demonstrated by the large 1969 sheet paintings with paper on canvas and, most impressively, by the ceramic tiles of the 1970s which are part of the exhibition of the museum´s collection.

The chamber exhibition shows 17 paintings by Emil Schumacher, among them 10 pieces from the Minnesota Suite. The exhibition marks the beginning of the program commemorating Emil Schumacher´s 100th birthday on August 29, 2012. SAVE THE DATE!