German Expressionism at the Leopold Museum: Landscapes of the Soul and Color Compositions

20.11.2019

Eminent works from the Braglia and Johenning collections on display for the first time in Austria

With the exhibition German Expressionism. The Braglia and Johenning Collections, the Leopold Museum is presenting a comprehensive selection of Expressionist works from two important European art collections. “Around 100 exhibits from the Fondazione Gabriele e Anna Braglia, Lugano, and the Foundation of Renate and Friedrich Johenning from North Rhine-Westphalia make for an impressive pas de deux of the two collections,” summarizes the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger. The selection is supplemented by works from the Nolde Foundation Seebüll, the Museum Abtei Liesborn, the Leopold Museum, as well as by paintings from private collections, including the Leopold, Private Collection.

The collectors’ couples

Gabriele Braglia discovered his fascination for German Expressionism in the 1908s, when he purchased a work by Paul Klee. With Friedrich Johenning, it was the acquisition of a watercolor by Emil Nolde in 1979 that sparked his collector’s passion. Anna Braglia and Renate Johenning shared their husbands’ passion for decades. In both instances, the high quality of the collections is owed to the couples’ joint selection of artworks.
“The works of German Expressionism have lost nothing of their suggestive power today. Inspired by this thought, the Leopold Museum decided to dedicate an exhibition to this momentous chapter of European Modernism.” Hans-Peter Wipplinger
Curator Ivan Ristić pointed to the diversity of Expressionist art, emphasizing in this context that the exhibition was in fact “a presentation of German ‘Expressionisms’ rather than of German Expressionism”. The high-quality exhibition ranges from Impressionist-inspired works, via examples of early Expressionism all the way to paintings influenced by Cubism and Surrealism.

Overcoming light painting

The exhibition opens with works by the Berlin Impressionist Max Liebermann. The 1902 recreational study created en plein air in Holland Groom on the Beach as well as an atmospheric, light-flooded garden landscape created in 1919 at his villa on Wannsee allow for a direct comparison with portraits created by August Macke in 1910. Though still informed by Impressionism, Macke’s works indicate that he was already in the process of overcoming light painting. Liebermann’s 1897 realistic depiction of Dutch children, jotted down with dynamic brushstrokes, is juxtaposed with Paula Modersohn-Becker’s reduced and unadorned children’s portraits.

Impressionism versus Expressionism

The Berlin Secession’s rejection of Expressionist works in 1910 led to the foundation of the New Secession. Its president Max Pechstein, a co-founder of the artists’ association Brücke, created the colorful work Young Lady with a Feathered Hat in 1910, which has been placed in the exhibition alongside Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Portrait of Emmi Frisch (1908). Kirchner’s post-Impressionist use of natural colors stands in clear contrast to the Brücke artists’ typical employment of generously laid-out compositions of complementary, contrasting colors.

The Brücke Artists’ Landscapes of the Soul

The exponents of the artists’ association Brücke, founded in Dresden in 1905, made Berlin the center of their lives and artistic output in 1910. As a contrast to the frenetic pace of life in the metropolis, with its varieties and theaters, studio parties and exhibition openings, but also its unmistakable social hardships, Max Pechstein, Erich Heckel, Otto Mueller and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff searched during the summer months for a heterotopic parallel world, an earthy paradise, for instance on the lakes surrounding Dresden and Berlin or on the German sea shores. Influenced by Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti depictions, which were on display at the Berlin Galerie Paul Cassirer, the Expressionists wanted to go back to nature and traveled all the way to the South Seas.
“The short-lived sociotope Brücke fervently strove towards a new encounter with Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ […]. The painting and bathing excursions of the Brücke artists and their female models […] stemmed entirely from a longing for the tropics. It did not take much imagination to turn the reedy area with hidden bathing places into a successful heterotopy.” Ivan Ristić

Emil Nolde’s “Unpainted Pictures”

An emphasis of the exhibition is on works by Emil Nolde. From 1916, the artist and his wife Ada lived in a farm house in Schleswig-Holstein. The harsh climate, abrupt changes in weather conditions, the effects of light, the transition from land to water, as well as low clouds, formed the basis for Nolde’s landscapes. Adolf Hitler, who was rigorous in his rejection of Expressionism, insisted on defaming his oeuvre as “degenerate”, despite the intervention of high-ranking advocates of Nolde’s art. Nolde made Anti-Semitic remarks and was a member of the National Socialist Workers’ Community Nordschleswig (NSAN), which was usurped in 1935 during the “Gleichschaltung” [enforced political conformity] by the NSDAP Nordschleswig. Nolde’s birthplace was ceded to Denmark in 1920 following a plebiscite in Schleswig, with the artist becoming and remaining a Danish citizen until his death. Nolde’s works featured prominently in the 1937 exhibition Degenerate Art in Munich, and from 1941 he faced an employment ban. His hopes of establishing himself as a German state artist remained unfulfilled. After the demise of the Third Reich, the opportunist staged himself as a persecuted artist, deliberately creating a false legend.

Der Blaue Reiter – Synthesis of the instinctual and spiritual 

A central part of the exhibition is dedicated to artists surrounding the editors of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter. The avant-gardist syndicate founded by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky in Munich in 1911 strove towards a synthesis of the instinctual and the spiritual. Kandinsky and Marc organized two exhibitions in Munich in 1911 and 1912 with the aim of demonstrating their art-theoretical concepts. The Bavarian town of Murnau provided a meeting place for artists, art critics and composers in the proximity of the artists’ couples Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin as well as Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter. Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger, two artists with an affinity for music, were also in animated contact with artists of Der Blaue Reiter. The exhibition closes with Klee’s gloomy watercolors as well as his prismatic and crystalline compositions, and Feininger’s ironic-humorous scenes and mystical landscapes.

Exhibition and catalogue

The exhibition German Expressionism. The Braglia and Johenning Collections is on display from 15th November 2019 to 20th April 2020. It is accompanied by an eponymous catalogue (G/E), edited by Ivan Ristić and Hans-Peter Wipplinger, with contributions by Michael Beck, Ute Eggeling, Angelika Katzlberger, Bettina Kaufmann, Ivan Ristić, Andrea Winkler and Hans-Peter Wipplinger.

Panel discussion (in German)

In the context of the exhibition, the Leopold Museum is dedicating a panel discussion to the problematic role of artists during National Socialism entitled Between Suffering, Escapism and Complicity: Artists during National Socialism, during which the journalist Olga Kronsteiner talks to Christian Ring, Director of the Nolde Foundation Seebüll, art historian Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, gallery owner Michael Beck and the exhibition’s curator Ivan Ristić.

Exhibition opening

The opening celebrations, with speeches given by the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger and the exhibition’s curator Ivan Ristić in the presence of Elisabeth Leopold, the Head of the Board of Directors Josef Ostermayer and Managing Director Gabriele Langer, were attended by some 1,200 visitors, among them the collector Friedrich Johenning, Gaia Regazzoni-Jäggli (Fondazione Braglia), Bettina Kaufmann (Johenning Foundation), Waltraud Leopold, Barbara and Karin Miele, Christian Ring (Nolde Foundation Seebüll), the gallery owners Michael Beck, Wolfgang Werner, Alois Wienerroither, Florian and Nikolaus Kolhammer, Susanne Bauer, Katharina Husslein and Raimund Thomas, MQ Director Christian Strasser, Ursula Pasterk, Gerald Matt, former US ambassador Helene von Damm, Beat Steffan, Heidi and Paul Senger-Weiss, Renate and Nikolaus Barta, the “grande dame” of Austrian television Ingrid Turkovic-Wendl, the artist Walter Vopava, the art experts Verena Traeger (Heidi Horten Collection) and Thomas Zaunschirm, the vice presidents of the Association of Friends of the Leopold Museum Leopold Birstinger and attorney Thomas Mondl, and many others.

For further images, please see the APA picture gallery

For questions, please contact:
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung
Mag. Klaus Pokorny and Veronika Werkner, BA
Press/Public Relations
0043 1 525 70 – 1507 and 1541
presse@leopoldmuseum.org
www.leopoldmuseum.org

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