Events

This first Swiss museum exhibition of drawings and paintings by Wilhelm Leibl (1844 – 1900) looks in particular at portraits and figural works. Supported by Courbet, influenced by Manet and admired by van Gogh, Leibl is one of the lesser known but influential figures of Realism in Europe. He withdrew to the countryside, where he founded an independent and modern form of figure painting, in which truth to nature and the study of the Old Masters supersede the anecdotal approach of traditional genre painting. Crucial for Leibl was not that his subjects should be seen as beautiful, but rather that they be well observed. The exhibition, which features loans from Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, travels to the Albertina in Vienna after it closes in Zurich.

Encouraged by Courbet, influenced by Manet, and esteemed by Van Gogh, Wilhelm Leibl (1844–1900) was among the most important representatives of realism in Europe. His oeuvre revolves around the uncompromisingly authentic portrayal of human beings. With his retreat from the city to the country, Leibl founded a style of modern figural painting in which the truth of nature took priority over the idylls and narrative tendencies of traditional genre painting. Wilhelm Leibl’s guiding principle was not that his models be beautiful, but that they be “well perceived.” This exhibition, which includes loan works from Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the USA, arose in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Zürich.