Verein zur Veranstaltung von Kunstausstellungen

By council resolutions of 21 February 1899 and 19 September 1917, the association was granted the privilege of holding art exhibitions in the Kunstpalast at any time.

The main purpose of the exhibition building was to provide Düsseldorf artists, whose work had been overshadowed by the glittering art metropolises of Munich and Berlin, with improved opportunities for presentation and marketing.

It was obvious to join forces with the large-scale industry booming on the Rhine and Ruhr, to which Fritz Roeber, as a co-founder and member of the Düsseldorf "Central-Gewerbe-Verein", had good connections.

[5] After the 1902 Industrie- und Gewerbeausstellung Düsseldorf and the 1904 Garden festival had already generated so much profit that the subscribers to the guarantee fund could be paid, the association took the decision in 1906 to hold large annual art exhibitions, such as those regularly held in Munich and Berlin.

[6] In its exhibition policy, the association, in which a bourgeois understanding of art in the tradition of the Düsseldorf school of painting initially prevailed, soon came into conflict with the up-and-coming generation of artists, especially the Movement Young Rhineland.