Events

From a geographic perspective, Europe is a maritime continent. In terms of length of coastline relative to its overall size, Europe is the most sea-bound of all the five continents. Nevertheless, Central and Eastern Europe in particular can often seem very remote from the sea. At first glance, the sea for many nations only plays a role in the daily lives of those who live on the coast, or as a holiday destination. How fundamental the sea has been in shaping Europe’s development, and the role it continues to play right up to the present day, will be highlighted from June 2018 in a new special exhibition entitled Europe and the Sea. The exhibition investigates the sea’s significance as a space in which Europeans ruled and traded, as a bridge and border, a resource, and a place of imagination and memory. Using 13 distinct themes, each assigned a European seaport to serve as an example, the display encompasses a historical range spanning from antiquity through to the immediate present. This in turn demonstrates how mastery of the seas over the centuries has represented a significant component of European power politics. Today, the role of the sea as a bridge and border is once again of urgent relevance: millions of people fleeing war, terror, and poverty are setting off for Europe. However, other factors such as the use and exploitation of the oceans’ resources concern us more than ever, and will in the future play a significant role for the environment and global climate.

The desire to create as realistic a representation of man as possible is as old as humanity itself, extending far back to Antiquity. In the course of cultural history, artists have developed techniques for representing the human body in the most realistic fashion possible. Whereas illusionistic sculptures from earlier centuries are still symbolic figures connected with religious, artistic and historical themes, since the mid-20th century, the focus has shifted to man and individuality.

News that the Bavarian Public Prosecutor’s office had seized the art collection of Cornelius Gurlitt (1932–2014), caused an international sensation when it was made public in November 2013. The origin of the more than 1500 works that the reclusive son of the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956) had inherited from his father raised suspicions: had they been looted by the Nazis before and during the Second World War? To investigate these suspicions, the German government provided the funding necessary to conduct further research, while Cornelius Gurlitt agreed to return any work identified as looted to their rightful owners. The exhibition "Gurlitt: Status Report" presents a selection of 250 works from a broad spectrum of the history of art that have been hidden from public view for decades. By addressing the provenance of each of the works on show, the exhibition also sheds light on the complex history of the individual objects.

"Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974–1995" shines a spotlight on a body of work in the history of video art that has been largely overlooked since its inception. The exhibition explores the connections between our current moment and the point just before video art was transformed dramatically by the entry of large-scale cinematic installation into the gallery space. Before Projection, which debuted at the List Visual Arts Center at MIT last spring, presents a re-evaluation of monitor-based sculpture since the mid-1970s with a tightly focused survey of works that have rarely been seen in the last twenty years. “Before Projection charts a history of video art that is coextensive with some of the most important developments in sculpture in the late twentieth century,” said Mary Ceruti, Executive Director and Chief Curator of SculptureCenter. “By presenting canonized figures alongside artists who have rarely exhibited in the United States, this exhibition provides a new look at the historical context for artists working in sculpture, video, and installation and across media today. I am thrilled to bring this important history and many of its under-recognized exponents to audiences in New York City.”

Christiane Baumgartner: Another Country complements the artist’s first major museum exhibition in the U.S. and offers an in-depth introduction to the artist’s work at mid-career. Baumgartner is best known for monumental woodcuts, handcarved prints that literally and conceptually expand the traditional boundaries of the medium beyond expectation.

Claude Monet (1840–1926) stands like no other painter for the impressionist style, and as the French “Master of Light”, he was also a central pioneer of 20th-century painting. He painted by the seaside, at Normandy’s rugged coastal cliffs, and on the banks of the Seine, with the water surfaces in his pictures reflecting the bright, vivid colours of lush vegetation in his summer landscapes and the frozen fog’s mysterious grey and blue in his winter ones. Monet’s light and colours change on the canvas in accordance with nature’s constant transformation, as well as the diversity of atmospheric impressions that the painter gleaned from his motifs—and it was his urge to capture this diversity that moved him to paint many such motifs in series. The Albertina is devoting a large monographic exhibition to Claude Monet’s treatment of colour, which has seen little examination to date, as well as to the painter’s passionate fascination with the world of plants and water in the garden of his country home in Giverny. Three paintings from the museum’s own holdings as well as important loan works from international museums and private collections illuminate Monet’s development from realism to impressionism and onward to a mode of painting in which colours and light gradually separate from the subjects that reflect them, with the motif breaking free from mere observation of nature. Eventually, albeit only after Monet’s death, these late works would pave the way for abstract expressionism in painting.

The end of WWI and the Austro-Hungarian Empire also meant the revival of major developments in the art world. Political and economic shifts led to artistic migrations, new ideas and perspectives and new artistic networks sprang up all over the place. Artists met up in arts centres and international associations and used magazines to communicate across political borders. They believed their artistic identity was more important than their nationality. This exhibition is your chance to take a look at the Central European territories in full transition through the eyes of Gustav Klimt, Josef Capek, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, László Moholy-Nagy and 75 other artists.

They are fast, beautiful, eccentric and innovative – the sports cars from the 1950s to the 1970s are objects whose bodies and engines combine to form a sensuous mixture of modern and classic elements, of design and aesthetics. In recent decades these automobiles have not just become sought-after collector’s items, but, in their capacity as “imagination machine” and Gesamtkunstwerk, they enjoy cult status. Against this backdrop the exhibition presents around 25 outstanding sports cars, all of which rank among the very icons of the history of design. In terms of unifying form, technology, design and emotion, each of the selected cars is evocative of a synaesthetic sculpture. The exhibition features legendary sports cars such as the Mercedes Benz 300 SL, the aero-dynamically designed Jaguar E-Type, Alfa Romeo’s Giulietta Spider which, streamlined and elegant, embodies “La Dolce Vita”, as well as the Lamborghini Countach, praised as a “supercar”. The show marks the beginning of a series of exhibitions directing the focus on the museum’s collection of applied art.

The exhibition focuses on one of the most famous works in the collection of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, The Chocolate Girl by the Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789). Liotard enjoyed enormous success as a pastel painter; even Rosalba Carriera, whose mastery of the medium had helped transform it into a serious and highly-admired art form, declared The Chocolate Girl to be “the most beautiful pastel ever seen”. It was thanks to the art dealer Count Francesco Algarotti, who purchased the picture in Venice in 1745, buying it directly from the artist for the Dresden collection of Augustus III, that the gallery first began to show works by contemporary artists. The pastel medium suited the Rococo taste for lifelike, brilliant portraits and allowed Liotard to create flawless, porcelain-smooth surfaces. The great popularity of the picture, however, also rests on the fact that it depicts a simple, unidentified housemaid, a hitherto rare motif. The clear-eyed precision of Liotard’s observation anticipated not only the art of the Enlightenment but also nineteenth-century Realism.

Harald Sohlberg is one of the greatest masters of landscape painting in Norwegian art history, and in 2018 the National Museum will show a major retrospective exhibition of his works. Well-known and much-loved paintings such as Winter Night in the Mountains (1914), Summer Night (1899), Flower Meadow in the North (1905), and scenery from the highland mining town of Røros will of course be on display. In addition, works taken on loan from private and public collections will be shown to the public, some for the first time in over fifty years. The exhibition will feature nearly sixty paintings and a number of drawings, sketches, and photographs from Sohlberg’s entire career.

The K21 is presenting the first comprehensive exhibition in Germany devoted to the Beijing-based artist Cao Fei. The featured videos, photographs, and multimedia installations by this pioneer of the post-internet-generation are representative of her artistic oeuvre as a whole. Oscillating between reality and fiction, her art reflects upon China's societal and urban situation, characterized today by continual and massive change. Cao Fei (*1978) draws upon her local and personal milieu in Beijing, at the same time integrating traditional Chinese rituals into her work. She exploits the latest digital media for projects that alternate visually between the aesthetic realms of documentary, feature film, and virtual reality. In cooperation with MoMA PS1, New York, and the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf/Berlin.

After more than 25 years of enthusiastic collecting, the museum's exhibits now comprise about 300 drawings, more than 500 prints, and all her posters and sculptures. Among the drawings - a focal point of the collection - there are some of her most impressive works, many from her later phase when she was predominantly preoccupied with the theme of death. Of her earlier work, three of the less than ten pastel and charcoal drawings that have been preserved and which she produced for the satirical periodical "Simplicissimus" are represented in the museum's collection. Sketch-like preparatory drawings, which throw light on the genesis of important prints, are also part of the collection. A focal point of these works is the history of the creation of her cycle entitled "Peasants' War" (1901-1908) and her series named "War" (1921/1922). In the field of prints all her great cycles are represented. These are milestones not only in the development of Käthe Kollwitz' work, but also in the development of 20th century prints in general. These prints include her earlier cycles "A Weavers' Revolt" (1893-1897) and "Peasants' War" (1901-1908) which were based on literary models, the woodcut series "War" (1921-1922), "Proletariat" (1925) and the later series of lithographs "Death" (1934-1937). In addition, the collection comprises individual works such as her last lithograph "Seed for sowing should not be milled" from the year 1941, which is the artist's legacy in her fight against war and the death of soldiers in action. Recently, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne succeeded in acquiring very rare prints from an important private collection which had been largely unknown to the general public. Among them are three early self-portraits: two etchings and a large-scale colour lithograph from 1903/4. The "Self-portrait en face" is printed in four colours. Being an experimental leaf, no further prints were made. For this reason, this print is unique and a highlight in the artist's œuvre as well as an example of the museum's successful acquisition policy. The 15 bronze sculptures are of particular importance as almost all the examples shown in the museum are rare early casts. Together with the copy of "The Mourning Parents" in the ruin of the church of Alt St. Alban and the relief on the Levy tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Bocklemünd, Cologne provides the unique opportunity of an overview of the artist's complete sculptural work. The Kollwitz posters, all of which are represented in the museum, are a rare highlight of the collection. The artist created them above all in the 1920s following her motto "I would like to exert influence in these times". The posters express an anti-war message and emphasise the artist's commitment to social justice, humanity and peace. Another part of the collection which is meanwhile almost complete is Käthe Kollwitz' book illustrations. All the works by Käthe Kollwitz illustrated in our Internet presentation are part of the collection of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.

This ambitious exhibition will for the first time examine a key moment in the history of fashion, when artists and architects developed a radical, new vision for dress that liberated the female body. The unity of art and life at the base of the “Reform” movement around 1900 motivated artists and architects to include woman’s dresses into their innovative aesthetic design experiments. They introduced their ideas to the public in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in 1900, which serves as the point of departure of Tailored for Freedom. The exhibition will present the artistic dress as a part of the Gesamtkunstwerk idea within the socio-political context of the European “Reform” movement and will include fashion, paintings, sculptures, applied arts, photography, dance and advertising notably from German reform movement centres, the Wiener Werkstätte, the British Arts and Crafts movement and Paul Poiret.

This exhibition is the first devoted to the family portraiture of Frans Hals (1582/83–1666), one of the foremost painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Organized by the Toledo Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the exhibition was prompted by the Toledo Museum of Art’s acquisition in 2011 of Frans Hals’s Van Campen Family Portrait in a Landscape, as well as the recent conservation of Brussels’ Three Children of the Van Campen Family. These two works originally formed one composition, separated for unknown reasons likely in the late 18th century or early 19th century. The exhibition reunites the sections of the Toledo/Brussels painting, where it will be shown with the three other family portraits painted by the artist, and includes loans from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the National Gallery in London, the Cincinnati Art Museum and other distinguished collections. The exhibition will travel to Brussels following its Toledo debut.

With some 100 masterpieces from the 15th century, this exhibition focuses on the ground-breaking artistic innovations that occurred at the birthplace of the Renaissance, and present the production of its major painters and their workshops. High calibre paintings, sculptures and drawings provide multi-faceted insights into the conceptual worlds and working methods of these artists. Painters in the Florence of the House of Medici engaged innovatively with themes, forms and techniques. They investigated reality with a new confidence, seeking out the laws of harmony and beauty, drawing after nature and studying the works of Antiquity. In doing so, they attained an unprecedented diversity of artistic forms of expression, not just for profane pictorial narratives and portraits, but also for the images of private and ecclesiastical devotion.

2018 is the centenary of Egon Schiele’s death. Marking this occasion, the Belvedere is showing its collection of Schiele paintings with highlights including Eduard Kosmack, Façade of a House, Death and Maiden, Embrace, and Four Trees. Visitors can look forward to an outstanding presentation shedding light on the full extent of the Schiele collection once housed at the Belvedere. The exhibition places a focus on the collection’s history. Curator Kerstin Jesse will answer questions about the works’ acquisition, their subject matter, and the people they portray. Preliminary studies and sketches will also be included. The Belvedere conservation department has been researching Egon Schiele’s works and his painting techniques since 2016 and their findings will be presented in the show. The exhibition presents an opportunity to gain an insight into the artist’s working methods while also offering a fascinating glimpse of his works’ pathways into the museum’s collection.