Masterpieces - Wienand Verlag

Masterpieces
Painting and Sculpture
Kunsthalle Mannheim
8 | Preface
Peter Kurz
9 | Preface
Hans-Werner Hector
10 | Masterpieces of the Kunsthalle Mannheim – A Never-Ending Story
Ulrike Lorenz
Edited by
Inge Herold
Ulrike Lorenz
and Stefanie Patruno
With texts by
Inge Herold
Karoline Hille
Mathias Listl
Ulrike Lorenz
Stefanie Patruno
and Anne Vieth
15 | On the History of the Collection
Inge Herold and Stefanie Patruno
Works and texts
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115
153
225
277
363
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German Painting in the Nineteenth Century
French Painting and Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century
Sculpture and Painting around 1900
Modernism in Europe
Realism in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
International Sculpture and Painting after 1945
Artistic Perspectives after 1960
Inge Herold, Karoline Hille, Mathias Listl,
Stefanie Patruno and Anne Vieth
441 | Biographies and Catalogue of Works
Julia Nebenführ and Mathias Listl
Wienand
Masterpieces of the Kunsthalle
Mannheim – A Never-Ending Story
Mannheim shines brightly like an island of the blessed in the evening light (fig. p. 11). Carl Kuntz, who
later became director of the Grand Ducal Picture Gallery in Karlsruhe, painted this veduta of his
­beloved home town on the Rhine in 1812 for Emmerich Joseph, duc de Dalberg. His vision is an
­attempt to bring order into a world, which even then was becoming increasingly complex. From 1873,
Kuntz’s legacy formed the basis of the municipal art collection. The first director of the Kunsthalle
Mannheim, Fritz Wichert, who was appointed to the position in 1909 at the age of 31, turned up his
nose at it before enthusiastically realising his own, highly personal vision of a programmatic ­collection
containing masterpieces by the great artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With a
mixture of pioneering spirit, fine judgement and an innate sense of quality, the charismatic Wichert
and his brilliant successor, Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, succeeded in establishing a new order for the
history of Modernism, which was then only just emerging. In the ponderous Art Nouveau building of
bright red sandstone in Mannheim’s Moltkestrasse, they helped to create one of the world’s first ­civic
museums for Modern Art.
The Kunsthalle Mannheim owes its existence to the willingness and enthusiasm of the energetic
haute bourgeoisie of this industrial town during the late nineteenth century, supported by an aspiring
working class that was thirsting for education. With the removal of the electoral court to Munich in
1777, Mannheim had lost its status as a princely capital. At the zenith of its industrialisation, however,
it was able to define itself through its Kunsthalle, which provided a new cultural horizon in that age
of progress, innovation and performance. The founding fathers of the Mannheim collection did not
focus their attention on established art, however. Instead, with their affirmation of Modernism, they
demonstrated both courage and far-sightedness. Erected to mark the town’s 300th anniversary in
1907, the museum building by the Karlsruhe architect Hermann Billing was designed with galleries
dedicated to international artists of the Reform Movement and reflected the latest developments in
the art and architecture of the time. In October 2013, the legendary Art Nouveau building will be
­reopened to the public following a major renovation costing some 22 million euro. As for almost half
a century, visitors will be greeted by The Big Fish von Constantin Brâncuşi (fig. 140). It was the fourth
director of the Kunsthalle, Heinz Fuchs, who decreed that this work should become the obvious main
focal point of the imposing hall and staircase. Surrounded by Hermann Billing’s darkly unconventional Art Nouveau architecture, the radiant beauty and reflecting transcendence of this sculptural
masterpiece has become an almost legendary symbol of the Kunsthalle Mannheim. With the reopening of the museum, Brâncuşi’s Big Fish will now shine for the first time in the differentiating light of
an important contemporary artist: Olafur Eliasson has arranged 35 Starbricks in the dome of the staircase hall, financed by the Wilhelm Müller Foundation, Mannheim. This architectural monument will
thus not only shine again in new splendour, with its exhibition galleries filled with daylight; for the
first time, it will also meet contemporary museum standards regarding climate control and safety, as
well as demonstrating exemplary economic viability and energy efficiency as a national lighthouse
project with regard to the “energy-efficient renovation of a historic museum building”. To mark this
event – a highly significant milestone on our rapid journey towards the future – the research team of
Carl Kuntz View of Mannheim, Castle and Rhine 1812
10
11
6 | Carl Spitzweg On the Bastion (Yawning Sentry; Peacetime) ca. 1860
5 | Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller The Graveyard at Hallstatt with the Krippenstein on the Horizon 1834
46
7 | Carl Spitzweg The Old Bachelor ca. 1847/50
47
Anselm Feuerbach
The Deutschrömer Anselm Feuerbach spent sixteen important years of his artistic career in Italy. “Rome
was my destiny,” he declared. Initially speaking, however, it was his earlier sojourn in Paris that was
most decisive for his artistic development. He worked there from 1850 onward as a pupil in the studio
of the famous history painter Thomas Couture, who had risen to fame shortly before with his monumental painting Romans during the Decadence. As well as being strongly influenced by his teacher,
Feuerbach was also inspired by the oriental subjects of Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Moreau. He was
fascinated by the works of the Persian poet Khwa-ja Shamsu d-Dı-n Muhammad Ha-fez-e Shı-ra-zı(ca. 1327–1390), known as Hafez, which had been translated into German for the first time in 1812 and
which had inspired Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to write his West-Eastern Divan. In the large-format
history painting, Hafez in Front of the Tavern (fig. 19), Feuerbach depicts the poet, who loved sensuous
plea­sures, in the very moment of artistic inspiration, thereby creating the prototype of the artist.
In 1855, Feuerbach travelled through Italy for the first time. During his sojourn in the mountains of
Trentino, he produced his early purely landscape paintings, including Waterfall near Torbole at Lake
Garda (fig. 21). In these representations of nature, Feuerbach’s aim was not to compose ideal landscapes, but to produce studies from actual nature, painted alla prima, without an easel and with total
concentration on the atmospheric detail shown. Produced four years later, the paintings Children by
the Water (fig. 23) and Children by the Well (fig. 22) are designed as companion pieces, contrasting the
Apollonian and the Dionysian worlds. The nude children and the depiction of nature contrast more
than anything else in the perception of calm and movement, closeness to and distance from nature,
passivity and activity. As in these pictures, Feuerbach also achieved a highly successful combination
of the representation of landscape and figures in the painting Paolo and Francesca (fig. 20). Here, however, the artist does not focus, like so many of his colleagues, on the dramatic moment in the love
story of the famous couple whom Dante described in his Divine Comedy, but evokes instead the
­contemplative mood and the intimate familiarity before the lovers’ tragic end.
In three of his paintings, Feuerbach took up the antique subject of Medea, whose magic powers
helped Jason to capture the Golden Fleece. When Jason fell in love with Creusa, the daughter of Creon,
King of Corinth, Medea wrought vengeance on him, not only by killing Creusa and her father, but also
by killing her own children from her relationship with Jason. In the version of the painting in the Kunst­
halle Mannheim (fig. 24), only a handful of attributes points to the deeds of Medea: the dagger, which
has fallen from her hand and is now lying at her feet, and the snake, which has been draped around her
arm like a bracelet. Feuerbach does not portray his female figure from antiquity in the manner of
­Eugène Delacroix – as a furious murderess bent on vengeance – but as a mourning woman caught in
a moment of reflection as she considers her bleak fate. IH
19 | Anselm Feuerbach Hafez in Front of the Tavern 1852
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61
Paul Cézanne
With the Smoker with a Restful Arm (fig. 50), the Kunsthalle Mannheim possesses a central figure painting from the mature works of Paul Cézanne, who is regarded as the “Father of Modern Painting”. When
Fritz Wichert purchased the work in 1912 from the art dealer Paul Cassirer in Berlin for the price of
35,000 Reichsmark for the “French Gallery”, he had to defend the acquisition against the hostile
­comments of the purchasing commission, who spoke disparagingly of the painting as the work of a
dilettante. The director of the Kunsthalle pointed out the importance of French art as a role model, and
its “great ability to serve as a stimulus”, without implying a lack of “patriotism”.
Between 1890 and 1892, Cézanne painted three variations of a man smoking a pipe and sitting at a
table on which he has placed his elbow, a traditional subject which can be traced back to the seventeenth century. The paintings were produced in close conjunction with the series of Card Players, in
which the same man acted as model. The two versions in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the
Pushkin Museum in Moscow depict a considerably larger section of the room, which is thereby revealed to be the artist’s studio, because in the background we can see several of Cézanne’s works,
shown as pictures within the picture. In the version in the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Cézanne has dispensed with these details; it seems to be the most concentrated version and is a fine example of the
artist’s striving for a simplification of form. Here, Cézanne was not concerned with the portrayal of an
individual personality, but was rather implementing his strict rules of form and colour. Correspondingly,
he reduces the colour palette to shades of brown, grey and blue, heightened by a little ochre and
green. The spatial situation does not seem clear because of the two-dimensional geometric elements
of the table, so that in his simple, calm and self-assured monumentality, the massive figure of the
­subject has an even stronger effect than in the other two versions of the picture.
After studying the painting of Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, Cézanne had initially moved in
Impressionist circles in Paris. He exhibited his works together with them in 1874 and 1877. Cézanne
developed his own pictorial language in series of works in which he repeatedly used the same subject,
including the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a mountain which lays to the south of his home town of Aixen-Provence, and in the field of figure painting with his card players and bathers. Although Cézanne’s
colour palette became brighter and he practised plein air painting like his fellow-artists, he did not
­follow them in the breaking-up of objects and contours. Instead, he was primarily interested in a new
way of arranging the pictorial space, whereby not only the brushwork in parallel hatching strokes, but
also the suspension of classical perspective and the geometricisation and stabilisation of the forms
played an important role. It was these compositional features in particular that greatly influenced later
generations of artists, such as the Expressionists and the Cubists, since they represented the starting
point for their own artistic endeavours. IH
5 0 | Paul Cézanne Smoker with a Restful Arm 1890
100
101
Auguste Rodin
The Gates of Hell, begun in 1880, is the opus magnum within the oeuvre of the French sculptor Auguste
Rodin. The bronze portal is six metres high and was commissioned by the French state for the Musée
des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, but was never realised. During a creative process which lasted for more
than 30 years, the Gates of Hell developed into an autonomous, pure sculpture, for which the Kunst­
halle Mannheim possesses a small study model (fig. 52). In this third and probably final model for the
large-scale project, Rodin experimented with the spatial arrangement of the gates and clarified the
overall composition of the groups of figures. Modelled originally in clay, then formed in plaster and
­finally cast in bronze after Rodin’s death, this lifelong experimental work on the Gates of Hell demonstrates a synthesis of Rodin’s sculpture. The artist himself described it as a “Noah’s Ark”, from which a
never-ending reservoir of more than 200 sculptures developed, which he isolated as single figures on
a number of occasions, varying them in other contexts and in various stages of execution, including
The Thinker, The Kiss and The Three Shades.
Within the context of the turn of the century, the Gates of Hell belongs to those picture cycles, poems
and musical compositions which replaced Christian representations following the secularisation during the nineteenth century. In this work, Rodin created a secular Last Judgement and a permanent
symbol of human existence. Based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Porte de l’enfer conveys the impression of the whirling, falling and plunging of the figures, human melancholy and despair: “But the movements which he found in the words of the poet belonged to another time; they aroused in the creative
artist, who resurrected them, the knowledge of a thousand other gestures – gestures of clutching,
losing, suffering and letting go – which had arisen since, and his hands, which knew no fatigue, went
on and on, beyond the world of the Florentine poet to ever-new gestures and forms”, Rainer Maria
Rilke wrote in 1903 about Rodin’s then still-unfinished life’s work.
The life-size figure of Eve (fig. 51) also has its origin in the story of this vast portal, which she was intended to flank together with Adam. In the interaction between inner and outer movement, Rodin
summarised in Eve’s tense body language the moment of shame after her recognition of her nakedness
and her fear of the wrath of God, shortly before leaving the Garden of Eden. Far removed from tradition,
Rodin modelled the Old Testament figure from the story of the Creation as an individual and dispensed
with the idealisation of the female body, which was customary during the nineteenth century. Rodin
retained both the signs of physical aging and the traces of the sculptor’s hand and also integrated light
and shade into the sculpture by means of the rough, three-dimensional surface of the figure’s body,
with all its “bumps and hollows”.
Rodin, whose sculptural work extends both formally and with regard to content from Romanticism to
Symbolism and Impressionism, described himself as a “bridge linking the two banks of the past and
the present”. In the independent development of the artistic means and through his innovative creative
approach, which developed out of the work on the Gates of Hell, Auguste Rodin acquires program­matic
importance as a forerunner of modern sculpture. SP
51 | Auguste Rodin Eve ca. 1881
102
103
6 6 | Karl Schmoll von Eisenwerth The Walk 1905
7 1 | Ferdinand Hodler The Song from Far Away 1906
125
9 8 | August Macke African Landscape 1914
170
9 9 | Alexej von Jawlensky Vision of the Saviour: Guardian 1920
171
12 8 | Marc Chagall The Bride with a Bunch of Flowers 1924/25
206
129 | Maurice de Vlaminck Village in Snow 1920
207
Otto Dix
“I need a connection to the sensuous world, the courage to face ugliness and unadulterated life”, observed the painter Otto Dix, who was born in Gera and, along with George Grosz, a main representative
of the left wing of New Objectivity. The 1920s marked a high point in Dix’s career; in 1925, his works
were on view in the exhibition New Objectivity in the Kunsthalle Mannheim and again a year later at the
International Art Exhibition in Dresden. Even during his brief Dada phase in around 1920, he tackled the
subject of the social realities of life, as evidenced in important Neo-Realist works, such as The Trench,
whose whereabouts are unknown, and his portfolio of etchings entitled War, which was ­published in
1924 and is represented by several sheets in the Prints and Drawings Collection of the Kunsthalle Mannheim. In addition to the central themes of war and the city, Dix’s works are characterised by a wide-ranging interest in humankind. This propensity can be seen not only in the large number of portraits of famous personalities of the Weimar Era, but also in numerous likenesses of workers, war cripples and prostitutes.
The two paintings confiscated in Mannheim in 1937 as “degenerate” – the Working Class Boy from
1920, now in the collection of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and The Widow – belong to this group of
subjects. As a substitute for the female portrait, which remains lost without trace to this day, the Direc- tor of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Walter Passarge, acquired the painting The Madwoman (fig. 158), also
created in 1925. Iconographically, the two pictures have a great deal in common and reveal, together
with the The Match Seller II (fig. 159), the objective and critical realism which Dix approached during the
mid-1920s. During this phase, when he was developing a new style, which coincided with the move
from Dresden to Düsseldorf and reached its zenith in Berlin, the artist began experimenting with a
glaze technique in the style of the Old Masters. Dix deliberately contrasted this orientation towards
forms and techniques used by Italian and especially German Old Masters, such as Lucas Cranach and
Matthias Grünewald, with his repertoire of subjects, which was orientated towards social reality and
reflected in his pictures of fringe groups of society.
Dix records the figure of the madwoman with grotesque exaggeration; her striped institutional garment with its frilled collar is opened over her emaciated ribcage, revealing her skinny breasts. In combination with the bony, clenched hands and the widely spaced eyes, the caricatured portrait has shifted into an aesthetic of ugliness. The genesis of the picture is also of interest as regards the painting
method, since Dix reworked it several times during these years. The madwoman’s visions in the form
of skull-like grimaces emerge from the widow’s veil, which winds its way across the composition using
a glaze technique. The artist employs allegorical concentration to give universal expression to the
mental vitality, which is articulated here in lunacy and lies between eroticism, death and insanity. The
little match seller is also recorded with an exaggerated representation of the individual; his overstated
features and gestures emphasise the sadness of the figure, while the monotony is heightened by the
grisaille-like colour scheme. It is not the individual fate of the boy that is important. He represents the
widespread, pitiful presence of thousands of beggars and street hawkers in the cities of post-war Germany. In this painting, Dix created a monument to a disadvantaged, marginal existence on the fringes
of society. SP
158 | Otto Dix The Madwoman 1925
159 | Otto Dix The Match Seller II 1926/27
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247
2 26 | Karl Otto Götz Torden 1969
332
2 27 | Peter Brüning No. 75 1961
333
2 29 | Peter Brüning No. 1/66 “Straßenmühle” (18a/66) 1966
336
2 3 0 | Bernard Schultze Decaying Bird-Stele 1975
337
26 4 | César Controlled Compression “The Third” 1961
376
265 | Yves Klein Victory of Samothrace 1962
377
2 87 | Ernst Hermanns Ball and Three Columns on a Base Area 1974
406
2 8 8 | André Volten Stacked Column 1968
407