Images & Texts

The painting Landscape with the Prophet Balaam and his donkey (ca. 1832) by the artist Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) is returning to the Städel Museum. The work from the museum’s collection was considered lost in 1945 and was recently rediscovered in a private collection. Thanks to the generous gesture of returning the work from private ownership, it is now once again on view in the Städel. For its presentation within the collection of nineteenth century art, the painting was carefully restored and newly framed by the museum. It is thus once again part of the Städel’s extensive collection of works by Joseph Anton Koch. A total of three paintings, thirteen drawings and forty-nine prints provide profound insight into the oeuvre of the artist, whose impact on German art in the nineteenth century cannot be overestimated.

“We are indebted to the former owner for the extraordinary gesture and generosity in returning the painting to the Städel Museum. Since the founding of the Städel in 1815, this work has been one of the early, impressive acquisitions of contemporary art. With the return of the work, it will once again be possible to show the full spectrum of Joseph Anton Koch’s oeuvre in the museum”, says Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

“Joseph Anton Koch was one of the outstanding landscape painters of the early nineteenth century. His paintings are characterised by clear contours, bright colours and a strict pictorial structure based on the rules of classical composition. With his style of painting and above all his biblical motifs, Koch exerted a lasting influence on German artists in Rome, especially on the members of the Catholic Brotherhood of St. Luke, who are known worldwide to this day as the Nazarenes”, explains Alexander Eiling, Head of Modern Art at the Städel Museum.

Once again, the Städel Museum is showing the graduates’ exhibition of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule. Entitled “Air Conditioned”, the presentation features artworks in various mediums and disciplines – among them painting, sculpture, installation and video – by altogether twenty graduates from 20 June to 14 July 2019. The works address a broad spectrum of themes and discourses of contemporary art.

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PRESS RELEASE

THE MYSTERIES OF MATERIAL. KIRCHNER, HECKEL AND SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF
26 June to 13 October 2019

From 26 June to 13 October, in the exhibition “The Mysteries of Material: Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff”, the Städel Museum will explore the reciprocal relationships between woodcut and wooden sculpture in the oeuvres of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich Heckel (1883–1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976).

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WALL TEXTS

Download the complete wall texts for the exhibition "The Mysteries of Material. Kirchner, Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff" here.

Short biographies of the artists

Download the short biographies of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff here.

PRESS RELEASE

MAKING VAN GOGH: A GERMAN LOVE STORY
23 OCTOBER 2019 TO 16 FEBRUARY 2020
#MakingVanGogh

From 23 October 2019 to 16 February 2020, the Städel Museum is devoting an extensive exhibition to the painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). It focuses on the creation of the “legend of Van Gogh” around 1900 as well as his significance to modern art in Germany. Featuring 50 of his key works, it is the most comprehensive presentation in Germany to include works by the painter for nearly 20 years.

MAKING VAN GOGH addresses the special role that gallery owners, museums, private collectors and art critics played in Germany in the early twentieth century for the posthumous reception of Van Gogh as the “father of modern art”. Just less than 15 years after his death, in this country Van Gogh was perceived as one of the most important precursor of modern painting. Van Gogh’s life and work attracted broad and lasting public interest. His art was collected in Germany unusually early. By 1914 there was an enormous number of works by Van Gogh, around 150 in total, in private and public German collections. At the same time, German artists began to vigorously examine his works. Van Gogh’s painting became a model and a substantial source of inspiration in particular for the young Expressionists. The emergence of modernism in Germany is hardly conceivable without his art.

Van Gogh’s success story is closely connected with the Städel. With the support of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, in 1908 it was one of the first museums to purchase works by the Dutch artist for assembling a modern art collection: the painting Farmhouse in Nuenen (1885) and the drawing Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes (1885). Three years later, the Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890), one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, was bought for the museum’s collection.

The exhibition is supported by the Franz Dieter und Michaela Kaldewei Kulturstiftung and the Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.

In three comprehensive chapters, the exhibition deals with the development and impact of the “legend of Van Gogh” in Germany. How did it come about that Van Gogh became so popular especially in Germany? Who championed his oeuvre, and how did artists respond to it? The exhibition presents Van Gogh as a pivotal figure for art of the German avant-garde. It makes an important contribution to understand the development of art in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Städel unites more than 120 paintings and works on paper in the exhibition. 50 key works by Vincent van Gogh from all of his creative phases constitute the core of the exhibition. On view are outstanding loans from private collections and leading museums world-wide. 70 works by German artists exemplify Van Gogh’s influence and impact on the subsequent generation. These include works by well-known artists such as Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paula Modersohn-Becker or Gabriele Münter as well as by others whose artistic positions could be rediscovered, including Peter August Böckstiegel, Theo von Brockhusen, Heinrich Nauen or Elsa Tischner-von Durant.

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Press Release

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is considered the quintessential modern artistic genius. With untiring creativity and ingenuity, he seemingly effortlessly made use of all genres, techniques, and materials. From 3 April to 30 June, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings will devote an exhibition titled "Picasso. Printmaking as Experiment" specifically to the artist’s graphic oeuvre. Featuring more than sixty etchings, lithographs and linoleum cuts, the exhibition presents a selection from the holdings of the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, enhanced by a small number of loans from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and a private collection. The selection vividly illustrates the full range and development of Picasso’s graphic oeuvre from the early years in Paris to his late work.
Whether etching, drypoint, lithography, or linocut, with never-dwindling curiosity and virtuosity, Picasso gained expertise in a wide variety of printmaking techniques, always questioning what he had found in new and experimental ways. The exhibition is structured according to the various printing techniques, which are always closely linked to the artist’s biography. The print series Suite Vollard, which Picasso created between 1930 and 1937 and with which he made full artistic use of the diversity of intaglio printing techniques, has its own section within the exhibition.

“The Städel Museum boasts an exceptional collection of prints by Picasso. It is not for nothing that the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings is considered one of the most important of its kind in Germany. With the exhibition ‘Picasso. Printmaking as Experiment‘, we now present a selection of these outstanding works by Picasso, which cannot be shown permanently due to their delicate nature. For our visitors, this is a special, if not unique opportunity,” says Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

“The graphic work in particular bears witness to Picasso’s productive energy. The complicated technical processes demanded great care from the artist in his work; at the same time, however, the prints also reveal Picasso’s often playful audacity in dealing with new media, as well as his everlasting joy in experimenting,” explains Theresa Nisters, curator of the exhibition.

Early Work
The exhibition begins with a key work from Picasso’s graphic oeuvre, the large-format and pictorially elaborated print Le Repas frugal (The Frugal Repast) from 1904. The artist, who had just settled in Paris, devoted himself extensively to the technique of etching for the first time, and immediately created a masterpiece. Le Repas frugal was created at the turning point between Picasso’s Blue and the Rose Periods, during which his motifs increasingly revolved around the universe of the circus. The acrobats and harlequins portrayed here served him as symbols of the precarious, somewhat “itinerant” position of the artist in his time.
Like Le Repas frugal, the etching Salomé (Salome), created one year later in 1905, was not engraved in a copper plate—typical for etchings—but rather in a zinc plate, which also shows scratches and traces of earlier use. The fact that Picasso used the same plate several times has often been interpreted as an indication of his strained financial situation at the time. He demonstrated his skill, however, which was already pronounced at the age of twenty-four, by integrating the existing hatchings and discolorations into the new composition in a virtuoso manner.

Suite Vollard
The central gallery of the exhibition hall features an exemplary selection of twenty-three sheets from the Suite Vollard, including the masterful mezzotint engraving Minotaure aveugle guidé par une Fillette dans la Nuit (Blind Minotaur Guided in the Night by a Little Girl) from 1934. The altogether 100 etching plates in the series created between 1930 and 1937 were executed during a turbulent period in the life of the then fifty-year-old artist, who separated from his wife Olga Kokhlova and had a relationship with the young Marie-Thérèse Walter. Picasso processed these experiences in his series of prints. It comprises central and recurring subjects in Picasso’s oeuvre: the relationship between artist, model, and artwork; scenes from the sculptor’s studio; the gender struggle between man and woman; and the myth of the Minotaur. The significance of the Suite, however, lies not only in its thematic diversity, but also in its technical range. Here, for the first time, Picasso exploited the entire spectrum of intaglio printing. Through his encounter with the Parisian printer Roger Lacourière in late 1934, Picasso had become acquainted with new techniques such as aquatint, mezzotint, and the sugar-lift process, the painterly effects of which contrasted with the clear graphic lines of the etchings. The Suite Vollard thus demonstrates Picasso’s extraordinary craftsmanship and his great joy in experimenting.

Sueño y mentira de Franco (Dream and Lie of Franco)
When Picasso completed the Suite Vollard in 1937, he had already begun working on another series of etchings titled Sueño y mentira de Franco (Dream and Lie of Franco). After the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936, a group of Spanish delegates asked the famous artist for a contribution to the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World Exhibition in early 1937. Picasso immediately began working on the etching cycle Dream and Lie of Franco but turned down the commission for a large-format painting. When, however, the small Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by an air raid by the National Socialist Condor Legion and the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie on 26 April, 1937, the Spanish artist changed his mind and, appalled by the horror, created the monumental work Guernica (1937, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid). After completing the painting, Picasso continued his work on the two etching plates of Dream and Lie of Franco. Contrary to what was originally planned, their individual images were not cut apart for separate postcard motifs but sold at the World Exposition together with a poem the artist had written himself in a folder designed by him for the benefit of the Spanish Republican government. On the occasion of the present exhibition, the Department of Prints and Drawings has received a rare copy of the complete portfolio as a generous donation and can present it in the exhibition together with the two printing plates on loan from the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

Lithographs
Picasso’s lithographic oeuvre is presented in the left wing of the exhibition hall. Whereas the various intaglio printing techniques had dominated his graphic oeuvre for almost fifty years, after the end of the Second World War the artist devoted himself for the first time seriously to another printing process, namely lithography. The artist quickly mastered the possibilities of planographic printing and exploited its rich variety in a large number of works. For over a decade, lithography dominated his graphic work. The motifs of this period are cheerful and depict images of his lovers and bullfights, as well as antique bacchants, fauns, and satyrs. Here, Picasso experimented with unusual tools, such as wire comb and scrapers, as well as with the use of unconventional solvents to prepare the printing process. In addition, the artist attempted various transfer printing processes and, especially after his move to the Côte d'Azur in the late 1940s, used more easily transportable zinc plates as printing blocks in addition to the conventional lithographic stone.

Linocuts
The colorful linocuts from Picasso’s late work conclude the exhibition in the opposite wing of the exhibition hall. From 1954 onwards, he devoted himself to this relief-printing technique, which until then had had no reputation as an artistic medium. The now over seventy-year-old artist helped the linocut to an unexpected heyday—in just ten years, he created more than 200 works. Linocut allowed Picasso to create pictorial motifs out of large, radiant colour fields, developing his own innovative approaches.
For the youngest work in the exhibition, L’Étreinte II (The Embrace, 1963), Picasso developed a completely new linocut process, in which he succeeded in impressively combining the technical characteristics of relief printing, intaglio printing, and planographic printing. L’Étreinte II thus vividly sums up the artist’s joy in experimenting with printmaking techniques.

PICASSO. PRINTMAKING AS EXPERIMENT

Exhibition dates: 3 April to 30 June 2019

Curator: Theresa Nisters (Städel Museum)
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Information: www.staedelmuseum.de
Visitor Service and Guided Tours: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de

Opening Hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10 am – 6 pm; Thu + Fri 10 am – 9 pm, closed on Mondays
Special Opening Hours (10 am – 6 pm): Fri, 19 April, Sun, 21 April, Mon, 22 April, Wed, 1 May, Thu, 30 May, Sun, 9 June, Mon, 10 June, Thu, 20 June

Admission: Sat, Sun + holidays 16 Euro, reduced 14 Euro; Tue – Fri 14 Euro, reduced 12 Euro; Family Ticket 24 Euro, free admission for children under 12 years; groups of ten or more regular paying persons: concession price per person. Groups are required to book in advance: +49(0)69-605098-200 or email at info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance Ticket Sales: shop.staedelmuseum.de

Introductory Tours of the Exhibition: Fridays 7 pm (except on 19 April), Sundays 2 pm, as well as Fri, April 19 and Mon, April 22 at 2 pm.
Participation is included in the ticket price.

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on social media with the hashtags #picasso and #staedel