At the heart of the exhibition colorful . farbenfroh at Museum Art.Plus in Donaueschingen are paintings by the American artist Dorothy Fratt (1923-2017) who passed away earlier this year.

Almost entirely unfamiliar to European audiences, the painter is a real discovery. Her work should be seen in the context of the Washington Color School, a group of abstract artists active in Washington, D.C. from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. Parallel to the Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting of the New York School, they created large-format paintings that were less concerned with gesture than with the plane, and developed a formal language that explored the interplay of colours and their effect on the viewer.

Dorothy Fratt left Washington, D.C. for Arizona in 1958, she remained true to the style, developing and refining it until her death in the summer of 2017. She left behind an extensive body of work that has yet to be discovered in Europe.

The exhibition is the first in Europe to show a representative selection of works by the artist ranging from the 1960s to the present. They are complemented by colourful two- and three-dimensional works by other international artists.Artists: Gianni Dessì (IT), Rainer Fetting, Ralph Fleck, Dorothy Fratt (US), Günter Fruhtrunk, Winfred Gaul, Heidi Gerullis, Otto Herbert Hajek, Keith Haring (US), Emil Kiess, Gerhard Langenfeld, Thomas Lenk, Alessandro Mendini (IT), Helmut Middendorf, Georg Karl Pfahler, Lothar Quinte, Matthew Radford (GB), Gert Riel, Reiner Seliger, Paolo Serra (IT), Pierre Soulages (FR)