The Museum der bildenden Künste (
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
: "Museum of Fine Arts") is a museum in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
,
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. It covers artworks from the
Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the Periodization, period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Eur ...
to
Modernity
Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the " ...
.
History
Museum Foundation and First Museum
![Leipzig Bildermuseum Augustusplatz](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Leipzig_Bildermuseum_Augustusplatz.jpg)
The museum dates back to the founding of the "Leipzig Art Association" by Leipzig art collectors and promoters in 1837, and had set itself the goal of creating an art museum. On 10 December 1848, the association was able to open the "Städtische Museum" in the first public school on the Moritzbastei. There were issued approximately hundred gathered and donated works of (at that time) contemporary art.
Through major donations including
Maximilian Speck von Sternburg,
Alfred Thieme and Adolf Heinrich Schletter the collection grew with time. In 1853, businessman and art collector Adolf Fer donated his collection under the condition that the city build a municipal museum within five years. Shortly before the deadline expired the museum was inaugurated on 18 December 1858. It was located on the
Augustusplatz
The Augustusplatz is a square located at the east end of the city centre of Leipzig, borough Leipzig-Mitte. It is the city's largest square and one of the largest (and, prior to almost all its buildings being destroyed in bombing in the Second Wor ...
and was designed by
Ludwig Lange in the style of the Italian Renaissance. Today, the
Gewandhaus
Gewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, the home of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics.
History
The first Gewandhaus (''Altes Gewandhaus'')
The f ...
is located at its location. From 1880 to 1886 the building had been for the ever-growing collection extended by Hugo Licht. At the beginning of the 20th century, Fritz von Harck donated a part of his collection to the museum.
In 1937 the Nazis confiscated 394 paintings and prints mainly of
Expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
in the propaganda campaign
Degenerate art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
. In the night of 4 December 1943, the building was destroyed by a British air raid. Much of the inventory had previously been brought to safety.
Dimitroff Museum and Interim Solutions
![Bundesarchiv Bild 183-42346-0003, Leipzig, Reichsgerichtsgebäude](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-42346-0003%2C_Leipzig%2C_Reichsgerichtsgeb%C3%A4ude.jpg)
After the destruction of the building on
Augustusplatz
The Augustusplatz is a square located at the east end of the city centre of Leipzig, borough Leipzig-Mitte. It is the city's largest square and one of the largest (and, prior to almost all its buildings being destroyed in bombing in the Second Wor ...
, the museum began a 61-year odyssey through several interim arrangements. After it was taken in 1948 in areas of the
former Reichsbank in Petersstraße, it moved in 1952 into the building of the former
Reichsgericht
The Reichsgericht (, ''Reich Court'') was the supreme criminal and civil court in the German Reich from 1879 to 1945. It was based in Leipzig, Germany. The Supreme Court was established when the Reichsjustizgesetze (Imperial Justice Laws) came in ...
.
After the decision on the relocation of the
Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig in May 1992, the museum had to move again in August 1997 into an interim site in Handelshof. The collection was shown in limited form at the interim sites.
New building
In the mid-1990s, the city decided to give the museum back its own building. On 4 December 2004, exactly 61 years after the destruction of the "Städtischen Museum" on Augustusplatz, the new museum opened at the former Sachsenplatz (Saxony Square). The rectangular museum building cost 74.5 million euros. Architects Hufnagel Pütz Rafaelian won the 1997 Europe-wide competition for the new museum. They designed a compact building mass framed by angled structures in the corners of the pre-war street block. It took 15 years until these 4 structures has been built. Today, the 34 meters high museum rises inside a court with outlets at every of the 4 sides and towers above those structures along the streets.
The Museum of Fine Arts was included in the Blue Book, published in 2001, which includes a list of nationally important cultural institutions in eastern Germany and comprises currently 20 so-called cultural lighthouses. As such, it is a member of the
Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen
The Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen (KNK) or Conference of National Cultural Institutions is a union of more than twenty cultural organizations in the former East Germany. It was established in 2002 in Halle.
It includes the following org ...
. The Blue Book aims to highlight the importance of East German cultural heritage for the cultural heritage of Germany and Europe.
Collection
![Andreas Achenbach 002](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Andreas_Achenbach_002.jpg)
Today's collection includes approximately 3,500 paintings, 1,000 sculptures and 60,000 graphic sheets. It includes works from the
Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the Periodization, period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Eur ...
to the present, focusing on
Old German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
and
Early Netherlandish
Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. It flourished especiall ...
art of the 15th and 16th century,
Italian art
Since ancient times, Greeks, Etruscans and Celts have inhabited the south, centre and north of the Italian peninsula respectively. The very numerous rock drawings in Valcamonica are as old as 8,000 BC, and there are rich remains of Etruscan ar ...
from the 15th to 18th century, Dutch art of the 17th century,
French art
French art consists of the visual and plastic arts (including French architecture, woodwork, textiles, and ceramics) originating from the geographical area of France. Modern France was the main centre for the European art of the Upper Paleolit ...
of the 19th and
German art
German art has a long and distinguished tradition in the visual arts, from the earliest known work of figurative art to its current output of contemporary art.
Germany has only been united into a single state since the 19th century, and defining ...
from the 18th to 20th century.
Important parts of the collection are works by Dutch and German
like
Frans Hals
Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem.
Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...
and
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder (german: Lucas Cranach der Ältere ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is know ...
,
Romantics
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
like
Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscape ...
, and representatives of the
Düsseldorf school of painting
The Düsseldorf school of painting is a term referring to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Düsseldorf Academy (now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf State Art Academy) during the 1830s and 1840s, when the A ...
such as
Andreas Achenbach
Andreas Achenbach (29 September 1815, Kassel – 1 April 1910, Düsseldorf) was a German landscape and seascape painter in the Romantic style. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Düsseldorf School. His brother, Oswald, was also a ...
. The highlight of the sculpture collection presents the
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
sculpture by
Max Klinger
Max Klinger (18 February 1857 – 5 July 1920) was a German artist who produced significant work in painting, sculpture, prints and graphics, as well as writing a treatise articulating his ideas on art and the role of graphic arts and printmak ...
. For the comprehensive work of Max Klinger and
Max Beckmann
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...
a separate floor is devoted.
In the field of
Modern Art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
, the museum is primarily to closed factory look of the
Leipzig School by artists such as
Werner Tübke
Werner Tübke (30 July 1929 in Schönebeck, Germany – 27 May 2004 in Leipzig, Germany) was a German painter, best known for his monumental '' Peasants' War Panorama'' located in Bad Frankenhausen
Bad Frankenhausen (officially: Bad Frankenhaus ...
,
Bernhard Heisig
Bernhard Heisig (31 March 1925 – 10 June 2011) was a German painter and graphic artist. Long-time director of the Leipzig Academy (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst; 1961–64, 1976–87) and a leading figure in East Germany's Leipzig School ...
, and
Wolfgang Mattheuer
Wolfgang Mattheuer (7 April 1927—7 April 2004) was a German painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Together with Werner Tübke and Bernhard Heisig he was a leading representative of the Leipzig School, a figurative art current in East Germany. ...
or larger stocks of the international currently very popular artists
Neo Rauch
Neo Rauch (born 18 April 1960, in Leipzig, East Germany; ) is a German artist whose paintings mine the intersection of his personal history with the politics of industrial alienation. His work reflects the influence of socialist realism, and owes ...
and
Daniel Richter.
However, large vacancies in this division of this international field are present. These resulted historically from the
GDR period and due to the tight financial situation of the city (the purchase of the museum's budget for 2005 amounted to only 75,000 euros) and can not easily made up. The museum tries to address this problem by experimenting with unusual combinations of works from different eras, which aims to provide visitors with new perspectives.
In the future the museum will be dependent on the expansion of its inventory from donations and permanent loans. The 19th-century tradition began with generous foundations, which itself led only to the founding of the museum, and therefore sits down even in the 21st century. On the occasion of the opening of the new museum building, in 2004 the art collector couple Dr. Hans-Peter Bühler and Marion Buehler-Brockhaus donated 41 works by French artists, including
Jean-Baptiste Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot ( , , ; July 16, 1796 – February 22, 1875), or simply Camille Corot, is a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast ...
,
Charles-François Daubigny
Charles-François Daubigny ( , , ; 15 February 181719 February 1878) was a French painter, one of the members of the Barbizon school, and is considered an important precursor of impressionism.
He was also a prolific printmaker, mostly in etchin ...
,
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism ...
,
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
,
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...
and
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
. This shows the development of the art of the 19th century by the
Barbizon School
The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name f ...
to
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
. Recently, the museum received from the
BMW, which is culturally engaged since the new Leipzig plant in the city, the photo collection "AutoWerke" (Car Works).
For the greatest benefactors a mosaic is dedicated as a token of gift and is on display in the foyer.
See also
* ''
Isle of the Dead'', painting by
Arnold Böcklin
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 182716 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter.
Biography
He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk tra ...
, 1886 version
*
List of art museums
Africa
Algeria
* Algiers: Museum of Modern Art of Algiers, Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
* Oran: Ahmed Zabana National Museum
----
Egypt
* Cairo: Egyptian Museum, Museum of ...
*
List of museums in Germany
References
Literature
*Leipziger Volkszeitung Journal, Sonderbeilage zur Eröffnung des neuen Bildermuseums vom 3. Dezember 2004.
*Bode, Peter M.: Das Haus der tausend Räume, in: Art-Magazin 12/2004, S. 19-31.
*Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Hrsg.): ''Corot bis Monet: Von Barbizon zum Impressionismus, Schenkung Bühler-Brockhaus an das Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig''
External links
*
Official site*
Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Museum der bildenden Kunste
Art museums and galleries in Germany
Museums in Leipzig
Art museums established in 1848
1848 establishments in Germany
Buildings and structures in Germany destroyed during World War II