Stadel Museum discovers an important work by French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérome

FRANKFURT.- In the context of examining the Städel’s nineteenth-century holdings in view of the imminent reopening or new presentation of the museum’s collections respectively, an important painting by the French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) has been discovered. The picture shows Saint Jerome reclining against a lion, his traditional attribute. After its comprehensive restoration, the painting will be on display for the first time as part of the Städel’s new permanent “Modern Art” (1800-1945) presentation. The work was last exhibited in London in [...]

Pop and Punk Drawings by German Artist Marc Brandenburg at Hamburger Kunsthalle

HAMBURG.- The artist Marc Brandenburg (*1965 in Berlin) has recently emerged as one of the best-known draftsmen of his generation. Affected by the pop and punk culture, Brandenburg documents aggressions, excesses and social exclusions in his graphite drawings as a reality of today’s society. His works are images of a subversive nightlife, portraits or extremely zoomed-in details of ordinary objects. These images seem to be harmless but turn to become symbols of experienced violence and power. Velocity and movement are the [...]

Hamburger Kunsthalle Opens First Major Philipp Otto Runge Retrospective in Thirty Years

HAMBURG.- Marking the 200th anniversary of his death, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is presenting the first major retrospective exhibition in over thirty years dedicated to Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810). Runge, who grew up in Wolgast, then lived in Copenhagen, Dresden and finally Hamburg, is considered one of the most versatile artists of the nineteenth century. Together with Caspar David Friedrich, he is the leading founder of German Romanticism. The exhibition Runge’s Cosmos pays tribute to this short-lived genius and his innovative artistic [...]

Canadian Artist Rodney Graham’s Through the Forest at Hamburger Kunsthalle

HAMBURG.- Canadian artist Rodney Graham’s (*1949) exhibition entitled Through the Forest provides insight into the development of his complex body of work. The exhibition brings together close to 100 works, dating between 1978 and 2010. They come from important private and public collections in Europe and North America. Graham’s interdisciplinary work embraces a variety of media: books, video, sculpture, painting, installation and music. His use of appropriation allows him to pay tribute to some important artists, writers, philosophers and pop [...]

Baloise Art Prize Winner Geert Goiris in the Hamburger Kunsthalle

HAMBURG.- On 5 May 2010, the Swiss insurance company Baloise Group will present Geert Goiris’ slide projection Whiteout to the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The Belgian artist is one of two recipients of the 11th Baloise Art Prize awarded by the Basel-based company in 2009. Since 1999, the Baloise Group has awarded an annual prize to two outstanding young artists participating in the Art Statements sector of the international art fair Art Basel. The awards of CHF 30,000 to each of the [...]

“The Jesus Scandal: A Liebermann Painting in the Crossfire of Critics”

HAMBURG.- The exhibition The Jesus Scandal at the Hamburger Kunsthalle centres on an oil painting of pivotal standing, The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple, 1879. One of most important works by Max Liebermann (1847–1935), it is being highlighted to mark the 75th anniversary of the artist’s death. When the artist showed the painting for the first time in 1879 at the Munich International Art Exhibition it sparked a scandal. Contemporary critics took offence that the Jewish painter should dare to [...]

Art in Hamburg in the 1920s Opens at Hamburger Kunsthalle

HAMBURG.- As part of the festival “Himmel auf Zeit” – die 20er Jahre in Hamburg (“A Temporary Heaven” – the 1920s in Hamburg), the Hamburger Kunsthalle is highlighting the diversity of the city’s art scene in the period after the First World War. In the years between the foundation of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, Hamburg’s avant-garde art scene was dominated by four different movements: one was a style strongly oriented towards contemporary French painting, [...]

Rediscovered Gerhard Richter Video on Show at the CCCS

FLORENCE.- Gerhard Richter and the Disappearance of the Image in Contemporary Art, an exhibition staged in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Hamburg, will take place at the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, in Florence from Saturday, February 20th to Sunday, April 25th, 2010. The show’s title is a tribute to the acclaimed German painter Gerhard Richter (b.1932). The exhibition, conceived by Franziska Nori (project director of the CCCS) and Hubertus Gassner (director of the Kunsthalle Hamburg), presents twelve works [...]