A mild morning on Lake Garda. Exhibition curator Beate Kemfert and her colleague, building technician Björn Erpenbach, are sitting in the Opel Movano with carefully secured packages in the back of the loading area. Inside: several paintings by the French painter Hélène de Beauvoir. “We visited private collectors in Italy, but also in Germany,” says Kemfert. “We would hardly have managed this logistically without the Movano and the Vivaro.”
The vehicles are more than just means of transport – they are safe companions to a European art expedition that lasted for months. From Bad Homburg to Regensburg in Bavaria, Kemfert collected works that can now be seen for the first time in Germany in a large retrospective in the Opel villas in Rüsselsheim: “Hélène de Beauvoir. Seeing with different eyes”.
She has a famous name, but many don’t know her. Hélène was the younger sister of the philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir, but she went her own way: as a painter, feminist and contemporary witness. As early as 1936, Picasso was impressed by her first exhibition in Paris – but then she disappeared from the art world’s radar. Only now, almost 25 years after her death, is her work being rediscovered. The Opel villas are showing over 150 loans from six countries: oil paintings, watercolors, engravings, drawings, original posters – many of them public for the first time. The show tells a life between realism and abstraction, between harmony and turmoil.
Unimagined discoveries
“It was an exciting search for clues in Europe,” says curator Beate Kemfert with a smile. For weeks she sifted through archives, private attics and legacies. “The owners often didn’t even know what they had in their boxes.” Some works, such as the “Impressions from Venice” from 1955, were picked up from Bad Homburg in an Opel Vivaro shortly before the exhibition began. “Every transport is exciting – we brought the picture well packaged and tied up safely to Rüsselsheim.”
“It was an exciting search for clues in Europe. Often the owners didn’t even know what they had in their possession.”
– Exhibition curator Beate Kemfert –
On the road with the Opel Vivaro: Beate Kemfert and Björn Erpenbach pick up an exhibit from a private collector in Bad Homburg.
Every move is perfect: the work “Venice, Impressions” is being prepared for transport.
The oil painting from 1955 arrived safely at the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim.
The Vivaro carefully brings the work of art to its destination – mobility in the service of culture.
The works, including previously unknown ones, can be seen until February 8th.
Hélène de Beauvoir. Seeing with different eyes
Opening hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday to Sunday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. // Wednesdays to 8 p.m
The exhibition can be seen in the Opelvillen until February 8, 2026.
Tours & program: Regular public tours, themed tours, evening tours with Crémant, as well as artist discussions and accompanying lectures. Appointments at www.opelvillen.de.
The fact that Opel provided the transport vehicles fits with the philosophy of the Art and Culture Foundation: mobility for culture. “It’s not just about showing art, it’s about bringing it together in the first place,” says Kemfert. In the exhibition rooms, Hélène de Beauvoir’s work unfolds like a mosaic of emancipation. Early, representational drawings stand next to abstract color explosions from the 1960s. In between: politically charged scenes – such as the monumental painting “I love you, oh say it with paving stones”, a reaction to the student revolt of 1968.
A look with different eyes
The woman is always at the center: strong, vulnerable, combative. In the 1970s, Hélène de Beauvoir became involved in the women’s movement, addressing violence, physicality and environmental destruction – long before the term ecofeminism became popular. “See with different eyes” – that was Hélène de Beauvoir’s appeal. A call to look at the world not through the lens of habit, but through the lens of empathy, vulnerability, equality.
Opel provided a Movano to pick up several plants in Italy.
Beate Kemfert picked up many of the loans personally.
Mobility in the service of culture: dozens of items on loan from the exhibition began their journey in Opel vans.
Art logistics on Lake Garda: The paintings find a safe place in the spacious cargo area of the Opel Vivaro.
For Beate Kemfert, it was only logical to begin the exhibition with the late pictures – those intimate depictions of women’s bodies that were created shortly after the death of her sister Simone. On the blue wall hang previously undiscovered oil paintings that Hélène de Beauvoir created in retreat in Alsace in the mid-1960s. “That was a turning point for her, almost a liberation,” says Kemfert.
Art that moves
Whenever valuable loans arrived in Rüsselsheim, there were goosebumps. “Then the Movano stands in the yard, the doors open – and for the first time in decades you see these works together in one place,” remembers Beate Kemfert. “These are moments you don’t forget.” The exhibition is not only a homage to an extraordinary artist, but also to what connects art and technology: movement, precision, passion.
October 2025
Text: Tina Henze, photos: Andreas Liebschner, Opelvillen