Images & Texts

THE STÄDEL MUSEUM

700 Years of Art under a Single Roof

Experiencing art, making new discoveries, coming together, learning: The Städel Museum is a place of encounter, exchange and the exploration of our past, present and future. A private foundation from its very inception, the Städel is sustained to this day by the generous support of citizens, foundations and business enterprises of the city and region. It collects, preserves and studies works spanning 700 years of European art history and teaches the public about them. With its on-site programme and online digital offers, the Städel Museum provides unique access to art across generations, epochs and styles—quite in keeping with the vision of its founder Johann Friedrich Städel. It creates spaces that stimulate our senses and put us in touch with important questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Art has inspiring answers to offer.

As stipulated by the banker and businessman Johann Friedrich Städel in his will, the Städel Museum was established in 1815 as a civil foundation. Thanks to the founder’s dedication and collecting activities, the museum can today offer its visitors a virtually complete overview of 700 years of European art—from the early fourteenth century to the Renaissance, from the Baroque to Classical Modernism and the very present. On more than 15,000 square metres, visitors can take inspiration from paintings and sculptures, photographs, drawings and prints. Among the collection highlights are works by such artists as Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Sandro Botticelli, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Vermeer, Maria Sibylla Merian, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, Lotte Laserstein, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Gerhard Richter and Wolfgang Tillmans.

In the fulfilment of its educational mandate, the Städel also pursues a strategy in the digital realm as a way of sparking enthusiasm for engagement with art and culture in a wide variety of visitor groups. Since first launching this effort, the museum has developed numerous innovative digital offers, including the Digital Collection, the Digitorials®, apps, podcasts, the online course on modern art and the Café Deutschland oral history project, but also film and video series.

You can download the complete press release as a PDF here.

PRESS RELEASE
2023 Exhibition Preview
Early Photographs of Italy / From Rodin to Picasso – The Relief in Art / Holbein and the Renaissance in the North / Contemporary Art by Philipp Fürhofer, Ugo Rondinone, Victor Man, and Miron Schmückle

Images of Italy. Places of Longing in Early Photography
23 February – 3 September 2023
Gondoliers on the Grand Canal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the antiquities of Rome: Numerous photographs by Giorgio Sommer (1834–1914), the company of the Alinari brothers (founded in 1854), Carlo Naya (1816–1882), and Robert Macpherson (1814–1872), among others, shaped the image of Italy as a place of longing. In an exhibition comprising 90 works, the Städel Museum will present a selection of early photographs of Italy from the years 1850 to 1880 from its collection.

Philipp Fürhofer: Phantom Islands
12 May – 5 November 2023
Palm leaves, sunsets, forests – at the interface between installation and painting, tropical landscapes by the artist Philipp Fürhofer (b. 1982) radiate towards the viewer in light boxes and paintings. However, the romanticism of nature is deceptive: Beneath layers of paint bursts, questions regarding the existential, reciprocal influence of humans and nature, of capitalist civilisation, and the constant destruction of our living environment are revealed. The Städel Museum presents the artist’s latest works in a focused solo exhibition.

Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso
24 May – 17 September 2023
Is it painting, or is it sculpture? No other artistic medium transcends the boundaries of our vision like a relief. This ambiguity has always made reliefs appealing to the most famous artists. In the spring of 2023, the Städel Museum will present a major survey exhibition on the possibilities explored in reliefs from 1800 to the 1960s. Literally outstanding works will be on display, spanning some 150 years, by artists that include Bertel Thorvaldsen, Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Alexander Archipenko, as well as Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Yves Klein, Louise Nevelson, and Lee Bontecou. To this end, the Städel Museum – in cooperation with the Hamburger Kunsthalle – is bringing together important works of art from European museums, including the Petit Palais and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts Lyon, as well as rarely seen works from various private collections.

Ugo Rondinone. sunrise. east.
28 June – 5 November 2023
Grotesque creatures welcome the public to the Städel Garden. The Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964) will transform the prominent hill above the Garden Halls into a strange landscape. For his group of works sunrise. east., Rondinone assigned a head with characteristic, highly reduced facial features to represent each calendar month. Visitors to the Städel Garden are invited to come face-to-face with all twelve creatures – and thus every month of the year – and experience the various joys, adversities, and emotions of an entire year in fast forward.

Victor Man. The Lines of Life
14 October – 4 February 2024
Intimate, predominantly small-format paintings seemingly lost in time characterise the work of Romanian artist Victor Man (b. 1974, Cluj). Subtle influences of the pre-Renaissance period and echoes of Symbolism can be discerned in his melancholic imagery. Amid the Old Masters Collection, the Städel Museum will present an exhibition of works from the last ten years dedicated to the painter’s artistic focus: self-portraits and portraits. His oeuvre reveals numerous art historical references but also represents a unique position in contemporary painting. A fascinating dialogue between history and the present emerges.

Holbein and the Renaissance in the North
2 November 2023 – 18 February 2024
Along with Albrecht Dürer, the painters Hans Holbein the Elder and Hans Burgkmair the Elder are regarded as pioneers of a new art: Renaissance painting. The centre of this art was the imperial and commercial metropolis of Augsburg, which developed into the capital of both the German and international Renaissance in just a few decades. In the autumn of 2023, the Städel Museum – together with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna – will dedicate a major special exhibition to this art historical turning point. For the first time, a significant number of the most important paintings, drawings, and prints by Hans Holbein the Elder (c. 1460/70–1524) and Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531) will be brought together in one exhibition. Works by other Augsburg-based artists from the period, dating from 1480/90 to around 1530, as well as selected German, Italian, and Dutch artworks by Albrecht Dürer, Andrea Solario, and Hugo van der Goes, among others, will augment the selection. These works were created either for municipal patrons or had an exemplary influence on the work of Holbein and Burgkmair. The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of the development of Northern European art from the late Gothic period to the beginning of the modern age.

Miron Schmückle. Flesh for Fantasy
1 December 2023 – 14 April 2024
The Romanian-German artist Miron Schmückle (b. 1966, Sibiu) is a very unique protagonist of contemporary art. Growing up in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu, as a child, the artist had dreamed of other worlds which seemed forever inaccessible due to the Iron Curtain. His early engagement with art history on the one hand and with flora and fauna of distant countries on the other resulted in a uniquely coherent artistic oeuvre.

Download the complete press release here.

PRESS RELEASE
GUIDO RENI. THE DIVINE
23 NOVEMBER 2022 TO 5 MARCH 2023

Exhibition annex
Press Preview: Tuesday, 22 November 2022, 11 am

With a large-scale exhibition opening to the public on 23 November 2022, the Städel Museum is rediscovering the former star painter of the Italian Baroque: Guido Reni (1575–1642). In his day, Reni was one of the most successful and celebrated painters in all of Europe, coveted by the most important patrons, including the Borghese Pope Paul V, the Duke of Mantua, and the Queen of England. Hardly appreciated in the nineteenth century due to other aesthetic preferences and later relegated to second place by the one-sided concentration on his temporary rival Caravaggio, he no longer holds the place he deserves in the public consciousness.

For the first time in over thirty years, the Städel Museum, in cooperation with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, is bringing together more than 130 of his fascinating paintings, drawings, and prints and thus offering a new perspective on Guido Reni. The painter was deeply religious and also superstitious, tremendously successful and hopelessly addicted to gambling, as one contemporary biography authoritatively informs us. Even during his lifetime, Reni was given the honourable epithet Il divino (“The Divine”) – this refers to his fame as an artist star who, aware of his skills, occasionally behaved like a diva. However, “The Divine” also refers to his themes: Reni is the painter of the divine par excellence. He had a profound effect on the religious iconography of European art and, like no-one else before or since, gave visual form to the beauty of the divine – be it the Christian kingdom of heaven or the world of the ancient gods. The enormous impact of his art is reflected in the countless variations of his depictions of the heads of Christ and Mary, with their upturned faces and heavenward gaze, reproductions of which still circulate widely today as picture pull-outs in Roman Catholic prayer books. Indeed, this unparalleled imitative reception history only served to tarnish Reni’s image, obscuring the actual qualities and other fascinating aspects of his art.

In addition to major works from the Städel Museum’s collection, such as the pivotal early copper panel Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1598/99) and the recently restored Christ at the Column (c. 1604), the exhibition features spectacular works from over 60 international museums and private collections, including the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Louvre in Paris. Added to this comes a string of newly discovered and never-before-exhibited works by the artist. Interspersed throughout this survey of Guido’s art are select images by the role models and contemporaries who influenced his practice (Raphael, Parmigianino, and Annibale Carracci, for instance) as well as rare historical documents, such as Reni’s revealing account book for the years 1609–1612.

Curator: Dr Bastian Eclercy (Head of Italian, French and Spanish Paintings before 1800, Städel Museum)
Project coordinator: Aleksandra Rentzsch (Research Assistant in Italian, French and Spanish Paintings before 1800, Städel Museum)
Supported by: Gemeinnützige Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain GmbH, Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V.
Media partner: Tagesspiegel, ARTE, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main Cultural partner: hr2-kultur

Download the complete press release here.

WALL TEXTS
GUIDO RENI. The divine
23 NOVEMBER 2022 TO 5 MARCH 2023
Exhibition annex

Introduction
This exhibition presents the star painter of the Italian Baroque: Guido Reni (1575–1642). Disdained in the nineteenth century and later outstripped in popularity by his contemporary Caravaggio, he today no longer holds the place he deserves in the general consciousness. In his own time, however, Reni was one of the most successful and most celebrated painters not just in Italy but all over Europe. Prominent members of the aristocracy and clergy vied for works by his hand. Reni already earned the epithet “the Divine” during his lifetime. On the one hand it was a reference to his fame as an artist who, well aware of his abilities, was occasionally known to put on diva-like airs. On the other hand, the honorary title il divino points to his subject matter: Guido was the painter of the divine, whether the Christian heaven or the world of the Greek and Roman gods. With his vivid pictorial language he translated the invisibility of the celestial realm into the beauty of painting. The show is the first for more than thirty years to unite Guido Reni’s paintings, drawings, and etchings and offers new perspectives on this fascinating artistic figure.

Download the complete press release here.