![Museum kunst palast East facade](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Museum_kunst_palast_East_facade.jpg)
The Kunstpalast, formerly Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf is an art museum in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...
.
History
The roots of the museum go back around 300 years. In 1932, the collection of the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová, ...
(Academy of Art) was housed in the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf. This included the exhibits given by the popular regent
Jan Wellem
Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine (''"Jan Wellem"'' in Low German, English: ''"John William"''; 19 April 1658 – 8 June 1716) of the Wittelsbach dynasty was Elector Palatine (1690–1716), Duke of Neuburg (1690–1716), Duke of Jülich a ...
, Duke of
Palatinate, and his wife
Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici
Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici (11 August 1667 – 18 February 1743) was an Italian noblewoman who was the last lineal descendant of the main branch of the House of Medici. A patron of the arts, she bequeathed the Medicis' large art collection, in ...
, and some rich citizens of Düsseldorf. The academy had been founded in 1710,
its collection expanded in the 19th century by the collection of
Lambert Krahe
Wilhelm Lambert Krahe (15 March 1712, Düsseldorf – 2 November 1790, Düsseldorf) was a German history painter and art collector.
Life
He was the son of a government clerk. Nothing is known of his early education. He found a patron in Ferdi ...
.
The Düsseldorfer Gallerieverein, founded in the 19th century, collected many drawings of the
Düsseldorfer Malerschule, later given to that collection. The Museum for Advanced Arts, whose opening was in 1883, merged with that museum later.
The Kunstmuseum in its actual form opened in 1913. Subsequently, the Museumsverein (the Museum Association) and the Künstler-Verein zur Veranstaltung von Kunstausstellungen (the Artists’ Association for the Realisation of Art Exhibitions) collaborated in the organisation of art exhibitions, and the foundation Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast was established in 1998.
[
In January 2020, the ]NRW Forum
The NRW Forum Wirtschaft und Kultur (Forum NRW), formerly the Museum für Industrie und Wirtschaft, is a museum in Düsseldorf, the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, dealing with the development and the economy of the state of North Rhine ...
became part of the Kunstpalast.[
]
Architecture
In 1902, the first Kunstpalast was erected at Ehrenhof ("court of honour"), for a major exhibition featuring artworks as well as industrial and trade items. A new building in Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style was designed by Wilhelm Kreis
Wilhelm Kreis (17 March 1873 – 13 August 1955) was a prominent German architect and professor of architecture, active through four political systems in German history: the Wilhelmine era, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the founda ...
in 1926, for an exhibition on health care, social care and exercise, called "GeSoLei
The GeSoLei (german: Große Ausstellung Düsseldorf 1926 für Gesundheitspflege, soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübungen) was the largest trade fair in Germany during the Weimar Republic. It attracted 7.5 million visitors. The name was constructed fro ...
". The Communal Arts Collection and the for ceramics
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
(applied arts
The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univers ...
moved into the Ehrenhof building in 1928.[
In 1969 the ceramics moved to the at the Schulstraße in ]Düsseldorf-Carlstadt
Carlstadt is a quarter of Düsseldorf and belongs to the central Borough 1. It lies south of the Old Town ( Altstadt) and was named after the Duke Carl-Theodor, who founded this borough.
Carlstadt has an area of . It is the smallest borough of ...
. There is also the '' NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft'' (forum for culture and economy of North Rhine-Westphalia) in the same building complex.
The museum was extensively remodelled by Oswald Mathias Ungers
Oswald Mathias Ungers (12 July 1926 – 30 September 2007) was a German architect and architectural theorist, known for his rationalist designs and the use of cubic forms. Among his notable projects are museums in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Colo ...
and reopened in 2001.[
]
Collection
The Museum Kunstpalast includes objects of fine arts from Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
to the present, including drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...
s, sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
s, a collection of more than 70,000 graphic
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, ...
exhibits and photographs
A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created ...
, applied arts and design
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...
and one of Europe's largest glass collections, the Helmut Hentrich Glass Museum./
The graphic collection includes 14,000 Italian baroque
Italian Baroque (or ''Barocco'') is a stylistic period in Italian history and art that spanned from the late 16th century to the early 18th century.
History
The early 17th century marked a time of change for those of the Roman Catholic religion ...
graphics. The collection presents several works from Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
/Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, beginning with the 3rd century BC. The art collection also include works from periods such as Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
, Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
, the time of Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
, the 19th century, the 20th century including a large collection of ZERO
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation
Positional notation (or place-value notation, or positional numeral system) usually denotes the extension to any base of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (or ...
works, and the present.
Restitution of Franz Marc's The Foxes
In 2017, the family of the German Jewish art collector Kurt Grawi requested the restitution of Franz Marc's painting The Foxes (1913) ("Die Füchse") which had been acquired by Grawi in 1928. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, they persecuted Grawi because he was Jewish, "Aryanizing" his business in 1935 and imprisoning him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938. Grawi fled Germany for Chile in 1939, selling the painting to fund his escape. In 2021, the German Advisory Commission recommended that the city of Düsseldorf restitute the painting to Grawi's heirs and the Düsseldorf City Council voted to restitute the painting.
In January 2022 Düsseldorf restituted Marc's The Foxes ("Die Füchse" ) to the Grawi heirs.
Gallery
File:Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Osteingang 2011.jpg, Entrance Eastern wing
File:Museum Kunstpalast - Eingang Westflügel (8235-37).jpg, Entrance Western wing
File:Interiors at Museum KunstPalast Düsseldorf-1.jpg
File:Interiors at Museum KunstPalast Düsseldorf-5.jpg, ''The Assumption of the Virgin Mary'' by Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...
Affiliated Institutes
*The Archive for artistical photography of the rhenanian artscene (AFORK) is part of the Modern Department and has an extension collection of prints and will be part of a future Research Center for the Arts at the museum.
*The ZERO foundation, founded by the Museum Kunst Palast together with the three ZERO artists Heinz Mack
Heinz Mack (born March 8, 1931) is a German artist. Together with Otto Piene he founded the ZERO movement in 1957. He exhibited works at documenta in 1964 and 1977 and he represented Germany at the 1970 Venice Biennale. He is best known for ...
, Günther Uecker
Günther Uecker (; born 13 March 1930) is a German sculptor, op artist and installation artist.
Biography
Uecker was born in Wendorf, Mecklenburg.[Otto Piene
Otto Piene (pronounced PEE-nah, 18 April 1928 – 17 July 2014) was a German-American artist specializing in kinetic and technology-based art, often working collaboratively. He lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Germany; Cambridge, Massachusetts; a ...]
, has temporary offices, with an extensive archive, in the New Harbour, and will be part of a future Research Center for the Arts at the museum.
Exhibitions
Among several exhibitions of archival material, the Museum Kunstpalast has already hosted some exhibitions on Old Masters as well, including:
*An exhibition of paintings by Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...
(from 2006 to 2007)
*The biggest exhibition of El Greco
Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...
paintings in Germany since several decades. The exhibition showed their influence on Modern Art. It took place in 2012
*An exhibition of paintings by Spanish baroque painter Francisco de Zurbarán
Francisco de Zurbarán ( , ; baptized 7 November 1598 – 27 August 1664) was a Spanish Painting, painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nicknam ...
(from 2015 to 2016)
References
* ''museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf'' with articles written by Bettina Baumgärtel
Bettina Baumgärtel (born 1957) is a German art historian who is head of the painting collection of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. She is a leading authority on the art of Angelica Kauffman and founded the Angelika Kauffmann Research Projec ...
, Sonja Brink, Christoph Danelzik-Brüggemann, Jean-Hubert Martin, Helmut Ricke, Dieter Scholz, Barbara Til, Stephan von Wiese. Book series of the Fondation BNP Paribas. Paris 2003 (in German, English and French)
* Bogomir Ecker, Thomas Huber: ''Künstlermuseum''.
External links
*
ZERO foundation website
Virtual tour of the Museum Kunstpalast
provided by Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world.
It utilizes high-resolution image technol ...
*
{{Authority control
Art museums established in 1913
Art museums and galleries in Germany
Museums in Düsseldorf
1913 establishments in Germany
Convention centres in Germany