Since its creation in 1995, one of the main tasks of the Ahlers Pro Arte Foundation has been building up and continually developing its own collection of art, which enables it to contribute to the variety and quality of the ahlers collection. In line with its goals, its focus lies predominantly in German expressionism. The artists of the “Blauen Reiter” (Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky, among others) and the artist group “Brücke” (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, among others) deserve special mention. But Emil Nolde, who was only a member of the “Brücke” for a short time, Max Beckmann and Paula Modersohn-Becker are also prominently represented in the ahlers collection.

In addition, the foundation takes an interest in the many connected artistic trends that have woven their way through the European art scene since the end of the Second World War, and in which the legacy of expressionism is still clearly evident. Examples included the international movement of nouveau réalisme (Arman, César, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Mimmo Roella, Daniel Spoerri, Jacques Villeglé, etc.) and ZERO (Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, etc.). Large groups of works by Dieter Roth, whose influence extended far beyond the Fluxus movement, and whose cross-disciplinary work continues to inspire many artists today, are represented in the collection alongside his contemporaries (Dorothy Iannone, Emmett Williams, etc.).

The collection’s other specialisms include, for example, Russian avant-garde art from the 1960s onwards (Grisha Bruskin, Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Dmitri Prigov, etc.) and Chinese avant-garde art created from the 1990s onwards (Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogang, etc.).