Images & Texts

PRESS RELEASE

NEW WAYS OF SEEING:
THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE 1920S AND ‘30S
30 JUNE TO 24 OCTOBER 2021

Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Press preview: 29 June 2021, 11:00 am

The Weimar Republic (1918–1933) was an era of great innovation in modern photography. There was a growing demand for press and advertising images—and numerous photographers to cater to it. Their works also appeared in elaborate photo books they published on their own initiative. One catalyst for these developments was the advent of the 35mm camera in the 1920s, an invention permitting unprecedented freedom of movement. Unusual perspectives, steep-angled views from above and below, and close-ups of details testify to a new enthusiasm for photographic experimentation. This modern aesthetic came to be known as Neues Sehen (New Ways of Seeing), a catchword that can be understood as a call for a new visual approach on the part of the photographer and the viewer alike. Pictorial language now became clearer, more direct, and in many cases more linear. In its matter-of-fact rigour it corresponded to the needs of a society that, after the disaster of World War I, had come to favour realistic depiction.
From 30 June to 24 October 2021, the Städel Museum will shed light on modern photography’s wide-ranging trends. In an introduction and seven theme-oriented sections, the exhibition ‘New Ways of Seeing: The Photography of the 1920s and ’30s’ will convey an impression of the medium’s various uses in the interwar period. Some of the works on view will also offer visual presentiments of the 1930s, in which the Nazis increasingly instrumentalized photography as a means of communication for political propaganda purposes. The show’s themes will encompass photography’s establishment at vocational training institutes and art academies, photographic illustration and photojournalism, the employment of photography in science and research, portrait photography, and the use of the medium in advertising, industry, and political propaganda. Historical magazines, photo books, and posters will supplement the works on view.

Curator: Kristina Lemke (Head of the Photography Collection)
Supported by: FAZIT-STIFTUNG, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung, Dr. Hans Feith und Dr. Elisabeth Feith-Stiftung

Download the complete press release here.

PRESS INFORMATION

CORONA PRECAUTIONS: STÄDEL MUSEUM TEMPORARILY CLOSED FROM 2 NOVEMBER 2020

The Städel Museum will be closed from 2 November 2020, prospectively until and including 7 March 2021. The Städel is thus observing the official precautionary measures to contain the corona pandemic.

We will inform you of further developments in due time.
Tickets already purchased for the Städel Museum collection and the exhibition “Passion for Pictures: Netherlandish Drawings of the Eighteenth Century” (until 18 April 2021) will retain their validity. If you wish to return your tickets, please contact the museum by e-mail at besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de.

Over the coming weeks, you can enjoy the Städel in the comfort of your own home. Use our wide range of digital offers: from the online course on modern art and the digital collection to a tablet game for kids and the podcast series FINDING VAN GOGH. For further information, see digital.staedelmuseum.de.
Stay in contact with us by way of the social media channels Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: @staedelmuseum #StaydelAtHome.

Publications and selected gift items from our museum shop are available at: shop.staedelmuseum.de.

STÄDEL MUSEUM

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-200, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

PRESS INFORMATION

MODERNIST ICON FOR FRANKFURT – ACQUISITION OF MAX BECKMANN’S SELF-PORTRAIT WITH CHAMPAGNE GLASS
OUTSTANDING ACQUISITION FOR THE STÄDEL MUSEUM / PAINTING TO BE FOCUS OF SPECIAL PRESENTATION STARTING 9 DECEMBER

It is one of the most prominent acquisitions in the more than two hundred years of the Städel Museum’s history. Support from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Städelscher Museums-Verein, the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, the Kulturstiftung der Länder and five private patrons has made the acquisition of Max Beckmann’s Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass for the Städel Museum possible. Executed in 1919, the painting is one of the artist’s most well-known and important works. It has been on loan to the museum since 2011. Thanks to the acquisition, it will now remain in the Städel permanently.

The Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass is among the artist’s most striking self-likenesses. What is more, within a small group of self-portraits meanwhile considered iconic, it is the only one to have remained in private German ownership until now. The artwork was in the legendary collection of Hermann Lange of Krefeld, who acquired it in the 1920s. After Lange’s death, it remained in the possession of his descendants, from whom it has now been acquired for the Städel Museum. Max Beckmann is today the most well-known German exponent of Classical Modern art, primarily on account of his early reception in the USA.

It was three years ago that Städel director Philipp Demandt first signalled his interest in the work to Hermann Lange’s heirs. Extensive negotiations ensued, leading to a generous concession by the owners that paved the way for initial inquiries with institutional sponsors. The latter responded with pledges as spirited as they were substantial, and five private patrons followed suit by committing to similarly exceptional contributions. The artwork is currently on view in the Städel Museum’s Beckmann room. From 9 December 2020 to 5 April 2021 it will be the focus of a special presentation at the museum entitled “STÄDEL’S BECKMANN – BECKMANN’S STÄDEL: The Frankfurt Years”.

“The Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass is not only one of the most prominent paintings by our ‘in-house artist’ Max Beckmann, but also an icon of the twentieth century. It has been my fervent wish to acquire this key Beckmann artwork since I took office in Frankfurt. A dream that initially seemed impossible in view of the painting’s sheer value, but also its status as a work coveted worldwide, has now – three years later – come to happy realization. Never before has the Städel Museum succeeded in making an individual acquisition of this magnitude. We are as grateful to the entire community of private and public contributors for their overwhelming support as we are to the owners for the great confidence they have placed in the Städel Museum. Thanks to this concerted effort, Beckmann’s masterpiece is returning to Frankfurt – its place of origin – forever”, commented Städel director Philipp Demandt.

Download the complete press text here.

2020

Passion for Pictures: Netherlandish Drawings of the Eighteenth Century
Extended until 24 May 2021
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings

The Städel Museum has in its possession nearly 600 Netherlandish drawings of the eighteenth century – and thus one of the most extensive collections of its kind outside the Netherlands and Belgium. From 1 October 2020 to 24 May 2021, the museum will devote an exhibition solely to these works. The show will feature 81 representative drawings by artists of whom many, though little known today, were quite successful in their time. The selection mirrors the structure and artistic quality of the holdings as well as the wide range of subjects they cover. Frequently executed as finished artworks on a par with painting, often in colour, the drawings catered to the enlightened eighteenth-century citizens’ passion for pictures, as well as to their thirst for dialogue and information. Art admirers cultivated the pastime of gathering to contemplate and converse about the works. The exhibition will unite designs for wall and ceiling decorations by Jacob de Wit, book illustrations by Bernard Picart, Netherlandish topographies by such artists as Cornelis Pronk, Paulus Constantijn la Fargue and Hendrik Schepper, atmospherically composed landscape drawings by Jacob Cats, the brothers Jacob and Abraham van Strij, Franciscus Andreas Milatz and others, decorative flower and fruit still lifes by Jan van Huysum and his numerous followers, depictions of exotic animals by Aert Schouman, satirical genre scenes by Cornelis Troost and Jacobus Buys, and much more. These works speak of the emancipation and heightened status of the drawing medium in the eighteenth century, but also of an intense preoccupation with the art of the seventeenth, the so-called Golden Age of Netherlandish art.
When the exhibition gets underway, the Department of Prints and Drawings will also once again open its Study Room to the public following major construction work. There visitors can request to view works of their choice from among Städel Museum’s collection of more than 100,000 drawings and prints.

Curator: Annett Sandfort (A former research associate of the Department of Prints and Drawings and the holder of a fellowship from the Stiftung Gabriele Busch-Hauck, Annett Sandfort carried out a thorough art-historical reappraisal of the eighteenth-century Netherlandish drawings in the Städel Museum collection.)
Supported by: Stiftung Gabriele Busch-Hauck

STÄDEL’S BECKMANN / BECKMANN’S STÄDEL: The Frankfurt Years
Extended until 29 August 2021
Exhibition house, first floor

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) is associated with Frankfurt and the Städel Museum like scarcely any other artist. Based in Frankfurt from 1915 to 1933, he produced a large share of his most important works here, developed his characteristic style, and in 1925 the city provided him with a master’s studio at the School of Arts and Crafts. Numerous views of Frankfurt and portraits of friends and acquaintances testify to his ties to the city, which, much to his regret, he left in 1933 after being forced to resign from his teaching activity. Vilified as “degenerate”, Beckman fled Germany in 1937. He died in New York in 1950.
Because of his close connection with Frankfurt, the Städel Museum has intensely concerned itself for nearly a century with collecting and researching Beckmann’s oeuvre, which has been presented in a large number of special exhibitions. The museum has continuously acquired works by the artist since 1918. With 11 paintings, 2 sculptures and more than 100 prints, the museum now has one of the most extensive Beckmann collections in the world. From 9 December 2020 to 29 August 2021, this special presentation is devoting itself to this body of work and Beckmann’s Frankfurt years based on selected works and documentary material. The focus is on his famous Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass as well as his important lithography cycle Die Hölle (Hell), which were both created in 1919 at a decisive point in his career and significantly influenced his further work.

Curators: Dr Alexander Eiling (Head of the Collection of Modern Art, Städel Museum), Dr Regina Freyberger (Head of the Collection of Prints and Drawings from 1750, Städel Museum)
Documentation: Dr Iris Schmeisser (Head of Provenance Research and the Historical Archives, Städel Museum)

2021

New Ways of Seeing: The Photography of the 1920s and ’30s
30 June to 24 October 2021
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Press preview: 29 June 2021, 11:00 am

German photography from the 1920s and ‘30s oscillates between innovation and continuity. Not unaffected by the incisive social upheavals after the end of the First World War, unusual perspectives, different styles and contrasts became the means of expressing the changed living situations and political landscape. From 30 June to 24 October 2021, the Städel Museum is mounting an exhibition on the trends and movements in modern photography. It presents a selection of over 100 pioneering photographs from the Städel’s own collection of photography, which comprises more than 5,000 images, and loans of works by prominent representatives such as Alfred Ehrhardt, Hans Finsler, Lotte Jacobi, Felix H. Man, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Erich Salomon, August Sander, Umbo, Paul Wolff or Yva as well as a number of lesser known photographers, such as Carl Albiker, Karl Theodor Gremmler and Paul W. John.
Between 1918 and 1939, photography influenced the art world and everyday life like in no other period. In seven thematic chapters, essential aspects of the artistic engagement with photography and its use in various contexts of use will be presented in the entire spectrum of their motifs. Historical magazines, books and posters complement the photographic works and exemplify their use in different media. The 1920s offered photographers numerous new areas of activity, from the illustration of magazines and books to advertising design. Yet this was not the only way of using photography that paved the way for its strong presence in public space. As a seemingly authentic reflection of reality, political movements also recognised it as a means of acquiring and controlling the masses. The new ways of seeing with the camera that developed in the Weimar Republic were seamlessly taken over after 1933. Unlike the vilification of the avant-garde in the visual arts, there were no artistic restrictions in photography – modern imagery had already firmly established itself in visual memory and was used in the National Socialist state for propagandistic purposes.

Curator: Kristina Lemke (Research Assistant for Photography, Collection of Modern Art, Städel Museum)
Supported by: FAZIT-STIFTUNG, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung, Dr. Hans Feith und Dr. Elisabeth Feith-Stiftung
Symposium: A scholarly symposium is taking place at the Städel Museum on 17/18 September 2020. It is dedicated to the late art historian, journalist and collector Wilfried Wiegand, who provided important momentum to the collection of photography at the Städel Museum. The results of the symposium will be incorporated directly into the exhibition. The symposium is being supported by the FAZIT-STIFTUNG.

Becoming Rembrandt: Creativity and Competition in Amsterdam, ca. 1630–1655
6 October 2021 to 30 January 2022
Exhibition Building
Press preview: 5 October 2021, 11:00 am

It is hard to imagine today, but when the young painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) moved from Leiden to Amsterdam in 1631, he was just one of many artists who wanted to make a name for himself in the flourishing metropolis of art, culture and commerce. He succeeded in doing so within just a few short years: Rembrandt gained extensive acclaim, trained dozens of aspiring artists, and engaged in the art trade, including the active distribution of his own paintings and prints. At the same time, his style changed radically – from the small, precisely executed paintings of his early days in Leiden to the large, dramatically lit narrative canvases of the Amsterdam period.
In a major exhibition, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Canada the Städel Museum will, for the first time, address Rembrandt’s rise to international fame during his formative years in Amsterdam. The presentation combines the Städel’s collection of works by Rembrandt, including The Blinding of Samson (1636), with outstanding loans from international collections, such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, the National Gallery in London, the Museo del Prado in Madrid, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In this exhibition, Rembrandt’s art enters into a dialogue with masterpieces by older and younger artists of his time, such as Nicolas Eliasz Pickenoy and Bartholomeus van der Helst, and with brilliant works by his own former students, such as Govaert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol. Focus will be placed on groups of closely related paintings that shed light on Rembrandt’s role and that of his contemporaries in this creative network. Rembrandt's pictorial production, and his impact, were surprisingly broad, encompassing landscapes, genre scenes and still lifes as well as history paintings and portraits. The examination of his competitors influenced his artistic development as well as his entrepreneurial ambitions. In Amsterdam, an exceptional number of talented artists competed for the attention and patronage of the wealthy and art-loving middle classes. It was precisely this exciting and stimulating atmosphere that challenged the young artist from Leiden to become the world-famous master that he is to this day: Rembrandt.

The exhibition is organised by the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Curators: Prof Dr Jochen Sander (Vice Director and Head of the Collection of Dutch, Flemish and German Painting before 1800, Städel Museum) and Prof Dr Stephanie Dickey (Guest Curator at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)
With support from: ING AG, Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung

Exhibition titles and dates subject to change

PRESS INFORMATION

Passion for Pictures: Netherlandish Drawings of the Eighteenth Century

Extended until 24 May 2021

The Städel Museum has in its possession nearly 600 Netherlandish drawings of the eighteenth century – and thus one of the most extensive collections of its kind outside the Netherlands and Belgium. From 1 October 2020 to 24 May 2021, the museum will devote an exhibition solely to these works. The show will feature 81 representative drawings by artists of whom many, though little known today, were quite successful in their time. The selection mirrors the structure and artistic quality of the holdings as well as the wide range of subjects they cover. Frequently executed as finished artworks on a par with painting, often in colour, the drawings catered to the enlightened eighteenth-century citizens’ passion for pictures, as well as to their thirst for dialogue and information. Art admirers cultivated the pastime of gathering to contemplate and converse about the works.

Download the complete press release here.

PRESS RELEASE

Städel’s Legacy: Master Drawings from the Founder’s Collection
13 MAY TO 16 AUGUST 2020
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings

With the bequest of his private art collection, the businessman and banker Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816) founded a public art museum of international stature, accessible to all – the Städel Museum. The collector left behind an art treasure encompassing not only paintings and prints but also more than 4,600 drawings. For a long time, it was not possible to determine which of the drawings in the museum’s present-day holdings were originally in his collection. At the time of the bequest, no complete inventory was compiled. Furthermore, in the course the collection’s reorganization in the 1860s, many drawings were sorted out and sold. For the first time, the Städel Museum has now succeeded in reconstructing the founder’s drawing collection to a large extent, and identifying the roughly 3,000 works still in the collection today. From 13 May to 16 August 2020, the Städel Museum is presenting a selection of 95 master drawings providing a representative impression of the character, organization and artistic significance of the former drawing collection of Johann Friedrich Städel. Following the founder’s tradition, the outstanding works by Raphael, Correggio and Primaticcio, Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard, Dürer, Roos and Reinhart, Goltzius, Rembrandt, De Wit and many others are here arranged according to “European schools”. They are moreover discussed in detail in an accompanying catalogue. A portion of these drawings are already known among scholars; others are here being published for the first time.

Curator: Joachim Jacoby
With support from: Stiftung Gabriele Busch-Hauck, Wolfgang Ratjen Stiftung, Tavolozza Foundation, Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung

Download the complete press release here.

WALL TEXTS

Download the complete wall texts for the exhibition "Städel’s Legacy: Master Drawings from the Founder’s Collection" here.

PRESS RELEASE

BACK TO THE PRESENT
NEW PERSPECTIVES, NEW WORKS – THE COLLECTION FROM 1945 TO TODAY

New Presentation of the Collection of Contemporary Art

Starting on 19 May 2020 – nearly a decade after the opening of the Garden Halls – the Städel Museum’s Collection of Contemporary Art will be presented anew for the first time. A history of art after 1945 fans out proceeding from the central square of the Garden Halls, which cover an area of some 3,000 square metres, beginning with major works of art dating from the recent past to the present. A total of approximately 230 works by 170 artists of various schools, styles and groups will reveal surprising comparisons, viewpoints and visual axes between the immediate present and its roots in past decades. In honour of the occasion, a large number of the museum’s most recent acquisitions and gifts will be on exhibit for the first time, for example works by Miriam Cahn (b 1949), René Daniëls (b 1950), Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923–2019), Jimmie Durham (b 1940), Asta Gröting (b 1961) and Victor Vasarely (1906–1997). With a wide array of narrative threads, the new presentation will allow experiencing post-1945 art from a thematic rather than a chronological point of view. The dissolution of the depicted object in formless, abstract painting, as seen in works of different decades, will be one thematic focus; another will be the advent of gestural painting and its impact on the generations that followed. The presentation will also address itself to the aesthetic of geometry and objects of everyday life – an aspect that turns up time and again in the period in question, charged with ever new meanings and references – in all its various forms and thematic premises. As visitors make their way through the rooms and squares of the Garden Halls, they will moreover gain insights into how the figure found its way back into the picture, how painting conquered – real – space, how the alleged competitors painting and photography entered into a mutual exchange, and much more.

Download the complete press text here.

PRESS RELEASE

EN PASSANT
IMPRESSIONISM IN SCULPTURE

Städel Museum, Exhibition Annex

Even today, a century and a half after its emergence, impressionism still fascinates people worldwide. Especially the paintings, with their loose, sketchy brushwork, bright palette and depictions of everyday scenes, are familiar to us all. The diversity of impressionism in sculpture, on the other hand, is a subject that has received far less scholarly attention to date and is unknown to the broad public. The Städel Museum will present the first major exhibition ever to explore the question of how the attributes of impressionist painting – such as light, colour, movement and even ephemerality – found expression in sculpture. The show will revolve primarily around five artists – Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), Medardo Rosso (1858–1928), Paolo Troubetzkoy (1866–1938) and Rembrandt Bugatti (1884–1916) – whose oeuvres represent the various manifestations of impressionist sculpture.

Download the complete press text here.

WALL TEXTS

Download the complete wall texts for the exhibition "EN PASSANT: Impressionism in Sculpture" here.