“Vexation of spirit”: the Duerckheim Collection at Serralves Museum

“Vexation of spirit”, one of the year’s major exhibitions, is now open at the Serralves Museum.

The Duerckheim Collection at Serralves Museum

Walking through the 90 works from the Duerckheim Collection featured in “Vexation of spirit”, on show at the Serralves Museum until 1 November, feels like turning the pages of an interactive history textbook.

The exhibition brings together echoes of the intense social, political and religious struggles that have shaped Europe and the world from the end of the Second World War to almost the present day. These artistic creations were carefully and persistently collected by the German collector Christian Duerckheim from his youth in the distant 1960s, like a researcher determined to substantiate his thesis.

Whether monumental or more intimate, almost clandestine in character, the works by 34 artists demonstrate art’s ability to absorb historical change and render it in another language, one equally close to life.

“Vexation of spirit” and historical change

“Vexation of spirit”, the possible translation of the exhibition’s biblical title, is powerfully present in many of the works that have been on deposit at the Porto museum since the end of 2024, under the agreement signed with the collector.

It can be seen, for instance, in Damien Hirst’s installation “Father (Divided)”, which presents two separate depictions of a bull preserved in formaldehyde. In the first, the animal’s exterior image, associated with strength, dominates; the second reveals its strange innards, as though visitors had been given X-ray vision enabling them to see through the animal’s body.

Also striking is “Dat rosa mel apibus” (“The rose gives honey to the bees” (2010–11), by Anselm Kiefer, which Duerckheim donated to Serralves. Across its 17 metres in length, the painting questions humanity’s place in the universe, specifically its insignificance when set against the vastness of the cosmos.