The Kunstsammlungen Zwickau – Max Pechstein Museum is a department of the Städtisches Museum Zwickau founded in 1925, which was inaugurated on 23 April 1914 as the King Albert Museum

Previous history

The new building by the architect Richard Schiffner was initially constructed to house the , the mineral Collection donated in 1868, the manuscript of the council archives and the art objects owned by the municipality, as well as the collection of the Antiquities Society. Today it houses the art collections (including the sculpture collection), the mineral collection dating back to the mineral collection of the Zwickau mining factor Ernst Julius Richter ''geowissenschaftliche Abteilung'' and thee Ratsschulbibliothek.

Development of the art collections

From 1925 to 1930, the art historian Hildebrand Gurlitt headed the König-Albert-Museum. Gurlitt's appointment in 1925 was to become the beginning of the development of a purposeful art collection. He focused on works by contemporary painters and organised numerous exhibitions. Thus, in 1925 he presented works by Max Pechstein, in 1926 the focus was on

Käthe Kollwitz Käthe Kollwitz ( born as Schmidt; 8 July 1867 – 22 April 1945) was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including ''The Weavers'' and ''T ...

and young Dresden, in 1927 works by

Erich Heckel Erich Heckel (31 July 1883 – 27 January 1970) was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the group ''Die Brücke'' ("The Bridge") which existed 1905–1913. His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Oly ...

and

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Karl Schmidt until 1905; 1 December 1884 – 10 August 1976) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker; he was one of the four founders of the artist group Die Brücke. Life and work Schmidt-Rottluff was born in ...

were shown, and in 1928 an exhibition was dedicated to

Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of the ...

. Gurlitt was in close personal contact with numerous artists of his time, for example with Ernst Barlach, whom he tried to win over as late as 1937 for the decoration of the tympanum of the Hamburger Petrikirche,Isgard Kracht: ''Im Einsatz für die deutsche Kunst. Hildebrand Gurlitt and Ernst Barlach.'' In Maike Steinkamp, Ute Haug (ed.): ''Works and Values. On the Trading and Collecting of Art under National Socialism.'' Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2010, , . which Barlach refused, however, in order not to get his patrons such as into trouble. Gurlitt had the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßlau ...

design and paint the Zwickau museum; this redesign, which was presented to the public in 1926, met with national acclaim. Some of the local press was less enthusiastic - not only about the redesign of the museum, but also about Gurlitt's progressive taste in art. Press campaigns against Gurlitt's preferred acquisition of modern art also brought into play the financial constraints of the city of Zwickau, which played a role in his dismissal on 1 April 1930, in addition to his not purely "Aryan" origin. Gurlitt's successors Sigfried Asche and Rudolf von Arps-Aubert then also acted much more cautiously during the National Socialist era and preferred more innocuous areas of collecting. Gertrud Rudloff-Hille and Marianne Vater, who worked for the museum in the post-war period, in some cases again followed Gurlitt's line somewhat, but also expanded the art collection after 1945 to include numerous Romantic works. An exhibition of works by Max Pechstein and the award of an honorary doctorate to this artist in 1947 can also be seen as a continuation of Gurlitt's efforts for the Zwickau collection. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, such efforts were fraught with difficulties in the

GDR East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

and also no longer took place under the folklorist Richard Wolf, who was in office from 1963 to 1986. The only exception was a donation from

Fritz Bleyl Hilmar Friedrich Wilhelm Bleyl, known as Fritz Bleyl (8 October 1880 – 19 August 1966), was a German artist of the Expressionist school, and one of the four founders of artist group Die Brücke ("The Bridge"). He designed graphics for t ...

in 1966, who gave the museum woodcuts by Erich Heckel and

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-centur ...

in addition to his own works. In 1971, the art collections received the Old Masters painting collection from the estate of the art historian

Walter Hentschel Walter August Wilhelm Hentschel (25 March 1899 – 22 December 1970) was a German art historian. Life Born in Zwickau, Hentschel began studying art history and history at the University of Würzburg, the University of Rostock, the University ...

. After the

Peaceful Revolution The Peaceful Revolution (german: Friedliche Revolution), as a part of the Revolutions of 1989, was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany's borders with the West, the end of the ruling of the Socialist Unity ...

, efforts were made to fill the gaps in the holdings. The museum's urban history department moved to the "Priest Houses" museum complex in 2003, while the art collections continue to be housed in the now listed building of the King Albert Museum. In autumn 2011, the museum's "Plastikhalle" was reopened as a display collection of late Gothic and early Baroque sculptures. In April 2014, the Max Pechstein Museum opened in the Kunstsammlungen Zwickau. The house is officially named ''Kunstsammlungen Zwickau - Max Pechstein Museum''.

Building

The main entrance is on the southern side of the central domed building facing the Festplatz (formerly Hindenburg-Platz, today Platz der Völkerfreundschaft). From the domed building, which is closed off by a viewing platform, there are three wings at right angles to each other, of which the eastern wing houses the and the city archive including reading room. The west wing houses the mineralogical-geological collections in the basement, the sculpture collection on the ground floor and the painting collection on the upper floor. The single-storey north wing houses special exhibitions and storage rooms. The eclectic representative building with its neo-baroque façade decoration is a listed building.Dehio, .

Directors

* Hildebrand Gurlitt, first museum director, 1925–1930. * Heinrich Kleinebreil, actually head of the city library, became managing director on the side, 1930–1933. * Sigfried Asche, 1933–1936. * Rudolf von Arps-Aubert, 1936–1945. * Gertrud Rudloff-Hille, 1945–1950. * Marianne Vater, 1950–1963. * Richard Wolf, 1963–1986.

References

External links