The Gunzenhauser Museum (german: Museum Gunzenhauser) is a museum and

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

located in

Chemnitz Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt , ) is the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden. It is the 28th largest city of Germany as well as the fourth largest city in the area of former East Germany a ...

, the third largest city of Saxony, Germany. It contains 2,459 works by 270

modern Modern may refer to: History * Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Phil ...

artists of the 20th century that have been collected by the art dealer Dr. Alfred Gunzenhauser. The Gunzenhauser Museum was inaugurated in December 2007 in the presence of

German President The president of Germany, officially the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: link=no, Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international corres ...

Horst Köhler and is one of the most important museums of modern art in Germany.

Building's history

The museum's building was constructed between 1928 and 1930 in the New Objectivity style as the former headquarters of the ''Sparkasse Chemnitz'' ("Savings and loan association of Chemnitz") and was one of the first high-rise buildings in Chemnitz. Fred Otto (1883–1944), head of the municipal planning and building control office between 1925 and 1944, purposely abandoned decorative elements and used bright, beige-coloured travertine for the facades. Thus, the building shows its balanced proportions and clear structure to good effect. The building's aesthetic centre is the former tills' hall, which is lighted by a glass roof. During the renovation, the architect

Volker Staab Volker Staab (born 25 December 1957) is a German architect. Life Born in Heidelberg, Staab studied architecture from 1977 bis 1983 at the ETH Zürich (Diploma Architect ETH). From 1985 to 1990, he worked as a freelancer for the office of Di ...

took advantage of the existing building's potential and minimized the use of structural addition and interventions.

Exposition

The collection's main component are numerous works 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 ...

. The exhibition consists of works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,

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 ...

. They attended school in Chemnitz and participated in the expressionist group Die Brücke. The museum also contains the second largest collection of works by Alexej von Jawlensky and Gabriele Münter, who were members of Der Blaue Reiter. There are works of several other artists like

Christian Rohlfs Christian Rohlfs (November 22, 1849 – January 8, 1938) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the important representatives of German expressionism. Early life and education He was born in Groß Niendorf, Kreis Segeberg in Prussia. ...

Paula Modersohn-Becker Paula Modersohn-Becker (8 February 1876 – 20 November 1907) was a German Expressionist painter of the late 19th and early 20th century. Her work is noted for its intensity and its blunt, unapologetic humanity, and for the many self-portraits the ...

and

Helmut Kolle Helmut Kolle (24 February 1899 – 17 November 1931) was a German painter who found major success in France in the 1920s, fusing the German Modernism, modernist style with that of French art, French painting. Kolle was born in Berlin-Charlotten ...

. Furthermore, the museum has pictures of Max Beckmann drawn in the 1930s and 1940s. From the Weimar Republic period there are works by

Karl Hubbuch Karl Hubbuch (21 November 1891 – 26 December 1979) was a German painter, printmaker, and draftsman associated with the New Objectivity. Life Hubbuch was born in Karlsruhe and baptised in the Roman Catholic church. From 1908 to 1912, he studie ...

Franz Radziwill Franz Radziwill (6 February 1895 – 12 August 1983) was a German painter known especially for his landscape paintings in a magic realist style. He was also associated with the New Objectivity movement. Radziwill was born in Strohausen. His fa ...

Alexander Kanoldt Alexander Kanoldt (29 September 1881 – 24 January 1939) was a German magic realist painter and one of the artists of the New Objectivity. Early life and education Alexander Kanoldt was born on 29 September 1881 in Karlsruhe in Baden-Württ ...

Georg Schrimpf Georg Schrimpf (13 February 1889 – 19 April 1938) was a German painter and graphic artist. Along with Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, Schrimpf is broadly acknowledged as a main representative of the art movement ''Neue Sachlichkei ...

and

Gustav Wunderwald Gustav Wunderwald (1 January 1882 – 24 June 1945) was a German painter of the New Objectivity style, and a theatrical set designer. Career The son of the gunsmith Karl Wunderwald and his wife Adelheid née Hirtz, Gustav Wunderwald was born ...

. 110 paintings originate from Conrad Felixmüller. The exhibition's centrepiece is the largest collection of 290 pieces by Otto Dix. The first self-portrait drawn with oil in 1912, early paintings from the period of the art college in Dresden (''Dresdner Kunstgewerbeschule''), important

Aquarelle Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting met ...

s und Gouaches from the period of the First World War as well as considerable works of the 1920s and the late work. From the period after the Second World War many works originate from Willi Baumeister,

Fritz Winter Fritz Winter (22 September 1905 in Altenbögge (now part of Bönen) – 1 October 1976 in Herrsching) was a German painter of the postwar period best known for his abstract works in the Art Informel style. Life Like his father, Winter ...

Ernst Wilhelm Nay Ernst Wilhelm Nay (June 11, 1902 – April 8, 1968) was a German painter and graphic designer of classical modernism. He is considered one of the most important painters of German post-war art. Biography Nay came from a Berlin civil servant' ...

Bernard Schultze Bernard Schultze (31 May 1915 in Schneidemühl, now Piła, Poland – 14 April 2005 in Cologne) was a German abstract painter who co-founded the Quadriga group of artists along with Karl Otto Götz and two other artists. On 7 July 1955 he marrie ...

and

Emil Schumacher Emil Schumacher (29 August 1912 in Hagen, Westfalen – 4 October 1999 in San José, Ibiza) was a German painter. He was an important representative of abstract expressionism in post-war Germany. In 2009 the Kunstquartier Hagen was inaugurat ...

as well as from

Karl Hofer Karl Christian Ludwig Hofer or ''Carl Hofer'' (11 October 1878, Karlsruhe – 3 April 1955, Berlin) was a German expressionist painter. He was director of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. One of the most prominent painters of expressioni ...

Johannes Grützke Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John (name), John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, ''Ioannes (given name), Ioannes''), itself ...

Horst Antes Horst Antes (born 28 October 1936 Heppenheim, Germany) is a German artist and sculptor. After his Abitur, he studied from 1957 to 1959 under the important woodcutter HAP Grieshaber at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (today known as the Sta ...

Klaus Fußmann Klaus Fußmann (born March 24, 1938), is a contemporary German painter. Fußmann was born in Velbert, Germany. He studied from 1957 to 1961 at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and from 1962 to 1966 at the Berlin University of th ...

Karl Horst Hödicke Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austrian ...

and Rainer Fetting.Ingrid Mössinger (Herausgeber): Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Museum Gunzenhauser, Verlag Prestel, 2007,

References

External links

Gunzenhauser Museum
at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Retrieved 19 November 2015. {{authority control Art museums and galleries in Germany Modern art museums in Germany Museums in Chemnitz Art museums established in 2007 2007 establishments in Germany

Building's history

Exposition

See also

References

External links