Die Highlights der Sammlung im Drägerhaus

In the organizer's words:

During the renovation of the Behnhaus, the 19th century and classical modern art collection has been brought together in the neighboring Drägerhaus. We are using this as an opportunity to present the highlights of the collection in a concentrated manner and in new connections. The art of the 19th century thus meets the art of the early 20th century even more directly. We want to present our collection "From Caspar David Friedrich to Edvard Munch" in new pairs of pictures, unusual visual axes and new (also digital) didactics.

The title says it all! Both artists form the cornerstones of an art epoch between 1800 and 1945, which is characterized both by rapid change and the associated contrasts as well as by remarkable parallels.

Unusual pairs of pictures
Ludwig Richter's view of the Elbe, for example, is entirely in the spirit of Romanticism, charged with symbolic meaning and historical narrative. A good 60 years later, the Impressionist Gotthardt Kuehl was interested in the mood, the atmosphere and the play of light when he looked out of his studio window onto the Elbe.
The artists of the so-called New Objectivity movement, on the other hand, mainly revived the old masterly painting technique of the early 19th century. Albert Aereboe from Lübeck not only painted his father in a classic smooth and fine glazing technique. The portrayal in the regalia of the cathedral pastor with a symbolic ear of corn in his hand is also reminiscent of the paintings of the Nazarenes around Friedrich Overbeck, such as his "Self-Portrait with Bible".

New visual axes
Edvard Munch's paintings have been part of the museum's collection since the 1920s. The museum director at the time, Carl Georg Heise, presented Munch as a "forefather" of modernism and an important source of inspiration for the German Expressionists. Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, who incidentally always rejected Munch as a role model for his art, is now linked to Munch's paintings in a new visual axis in our presentation, as are Max Pechstein and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

The highlight exhibition in the Drägerhaus is intended to make the paintings in the collection speak anew and to open up the art of Romanticism to Classical Modernism to visitors in a variety of ways.