Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe Exhibits "Animal Still Lifes from the Renaissance to Modernism"

Written by Helma Felixmüller Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:17

Karlsruhe, Germany.- The Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe will unveil a new major exhibition that will, for the first time ever, cast the spotlight on the rich history of the genre of the animal still life, spanning from the 16th to the 20th century. “Of Beauty and Death: Animal Still Lifes from the Renaissance to Modernism” remains on view through February 19th. Over 120 paintings, watercolours and reliefs by such famous artists as Albrecht Dürer, Peter-Paul Rubens, Jan Weenix, Jean Siméon Chardin, Francisco Goya, Édouard Manet, James Ensor, Oskar Kokoschka and Max Beckmann form a testimony of the subject’s importance. Besides works from the museum's own collection, around 90 exquisite loans from renowned museums in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich provide insights into this fascinating pictorial world. Works from the museum's own collection can now be viewed in a wider context thanks to the many loaned works also on display.

The exhibition not only illustrates how the function and visual symbolism of the animal still life changed over the course of centuries, but also shows how the artists’ perception of the recurring motifs changed too. Alongside the enormous range in styles in their compositions, the images themselves are expressions of widely differing things: at once a symbol of aristocratic hunting pleasure, metaphors for human suffering and an expression of sensual experience. The Renaissance saw the creation of works commissioned by rulers who had a passion for hunting. These works amount to the first independent depictions of slain beasts, their beauty captured even in death. One such ruler, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, commissioned his court painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder, to create decorations featuring game birds for his hunting residences. The painted trophies were supposed to attest his hunting successes. At the same time, depictions of animals crept into Cranach’s history paintings, where they were imbued with a complex metaphorical significance. With scientific scrutiny, Dürer, by contrast, took up the depiction of animals in his early study of a slaughtered duck, faithfully rendering the creature’s plumage to the very last detail. Following on from such pioneers as Lucas Cranach, in the late 16th century the animal still life evolved as a genre in its own right, first flourishing in Flanders, before being adopted by the Dutch in their ‘Golden Age’ in the 17th century and undergoing some striking changes in the process. Works by artists from the southern and northern Netherlands form two important focal points in the show. The exhibition also highlights works by French painters of the 18th century, the shift towards modernism around 1800, as well as the animal still lifes of the Impressionists and Expressionists in the 19th and 20th century.


The themed exhibition, conceived to give visitors a comprehensive overview of the genre, makes it clear how much the artists’ handling of the traditional motifs has changed over time. That said, however, the show also reveals the clear affinities between the works that cross centuries. Gustave Courbet, for instance, showed that he was influenced by the naturalistic technique and art of composition of a Jan Weenix. And in his depiction of a dead eagle owl, we see Manet’s response not just to Chardin but to the trompe-l’œil in general, to which artists have repeatedly turned their hand in creating visual illusions since antiquity. Chaïm Soutine’s pictures, meanwhile, reveal a close affinity with Goya’s works. In the hands of both artists, slaughtered animals become metaphors for human life. Beyond their possible meanings, the genre of the animal still life presented artists of all epochs with a challenge of skill. The genre demanded painterly virtuosity, irrespective of whether they used the means of naturalistic optical illusion or free expression. Only by uniting the pictures from various epochs under one roof do the painterly affinities between the works become evident here today.

The Staatliche Kunsthalle (State Art Gallery) is an art museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, created by architect Heinrich Hübsch and opened in 1846 after nine years of work in a neoclassical building next to the Karlsruhe Castle and the Karlsruhe Botanical Garden. This historical building with its subsequent extensions now houses the part of the collection covering the 14th to the 19th century while the 20th century is displayed in the nearby building of the Botanical Gardens's former orangery. The museum notably displays paintings by Matthias Grünewald (most notably the Tauberbischofsheim altarpiece), Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Burgkmair, Rembrandt, Pieter de Hooch, Peter Paul Rubens, David Teniers the Younger, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Caspar David Friedrich, Hans Thoma, Lovis Corinth, August Macke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Franz Marc, Max Pechstein, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Juan Gris, Yves Tanguy, Robert Delaunay and Otto Dix. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.kunsthalle-karlsruhe.de

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