Sammlung Domnick Nürtingen

The Sammlung Domnick is a specialist museum of post-war abstract art and sculpture in Nürtingen, a town just outside Stuttgart. The collection began in 1946 when Ottomar Domnick, a psychiatrist and film-maker, started to buy early works by artists who later became central to abstract art. The core of the collection is formed by paintings and works on paper by Willi Baumeister, Hans Hartung and Fritz Winter, alongside African and New Guinean masks and metal sculptures. The building itself is a landmark of modern museology. Designed in 1967 by the architect Paul Stohrer, it was conceived as a ‘museum to live in’ and remained Ottomar Domnick’s home until his death in 1989. Inside, the 1 000-square-metre floor is divided into squares, with open spaces, staggered levels and white walls that set the abstract works in sharp relief. After a thorough restoration in 2005–06 the house and its park reopened to the public. Beyond the museum, the Domnicks acquired an adjoining plot in 1976 and laid out a park-like garden threaded by three winding paths. Along these paths stand thirty-two abstract sculptures in steel, iron and bronze, acquired between 1977 and 1986. The sequence begins with Max Schmitz’s untitled piece and ends with Bernar Venet’s Ligne indéterminée, while a beech hedge encloses the whole grounds. Since 2017 the ensemble has been managed by the State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg, offering visitors a quiet setting in which to experience a coherent vision of modern abstraction.