The Splendid Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts Greets Our AKN Editor On Tour

Written by Michael DiPietro Saturday, 17 March 2012 23:10

The Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1837 by the arts association Leipziger Kunstverein. Donations by various foundations, private collectors and generous individuals facilitated the building of a collection of more than 3,500 paintings, 800 sculptures and 55000 drawings and graphic reproductions. The collection comprises works ranging from the Middle Ages to the present. In 2004 the museum moved to its new location in the historical centre of Leipzig. The paintings and sculptures in this museum include works by Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Rodin, and van Eyck. In the museum's new home, designed like a glass cube, is one of eastern Germany's most impressive art collections. On exhibit is art ranging from the medieval period in Germany up to modern art in the United States of today. The most important art is the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder, including 16th-century portraits. Tintoretto weighs in with his Resurrection of Lazarus, and there are many paintings from the German schools of the 19th and 20th centuries. Impressive pieces of sculpture are by such older masters as Rodin as well as Berthel Thorvaldsen, the most famous sculptor to come out of Denmark. Through major donations including Maximilian Speck von Sternburg, Alfred Thieme and Adolf Heinrich Schletter the collection grew with time. In 1853, businessman and art collector Adolf Heinrich Schletter donated his collection under the condition that the city build a municipal museum within five years. Shortly before the deadline expired the museum was inaugurated on 18 December 1858. It was located on the Augustusplatz and was designed by Ludwig Lange in the style of the Italian Renaissance. From 1880 to 1886 the building had been for the ever-growing collection extended by Hugo Licht. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Fritz von Harck donated a part of his collection to the museum. In 1937 the Nazis confiscated 394 paintings and prints mainly of Expressionism in the propaganda campaign Degenerate art. In the night of 4 December 1943, the building was destroyed by a British air raid. Much of the inventory had previously been brought to safety. Today's collection includes approximately 3,500 paintings, 1,000 sculptures and 60,000 graphic sheets.OIt includes works from the Late Middle Ages to the present, focusing on Old German and Early Netherlandish art of the 15th and 16th Century, Italian art from the 15th to 18th Century, Dutch art of the 17th Century, French art of the 19th and German art from the 18th to 20th Century. Important parts of the collection are works by Dutch and German Old Masters like Frans Hals and Lucas Cranach the Elder, Romantics like Caspar David Friedrich, and representatives of the Düsseldorf school of painting such as Andreas Achenbach. The highlight of the sculpture collection presents the Beethoven sculpture by Max Klinger. For the comprehensive work of Max Klinger and Max Beckmann a separate floor is devoted. In the field of Modern Art, the museum primarily collects of the Leipzig School by artists such as Werner Tübke, Bernhard Heisig, and Wolfgang Mattheuer and larger stocks of the international currently very popular artists Neo Rauch and Daniel Richter. By the mid-1990s, the city decided to give the museum back their own building. On 4 December 2004, exactly 61 years after the destruction of the "Städtischen Museum" on Augustusplatz, opened the new museum at the former Sachsenplatz (Saxony Square). The rectangular building of the museum cost 74.5 million euros and was designed by the architect Karl Hufnagel, Peter Pütz and Michael Rafaelian. The art-historical library of the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig is one of nearly 100,000 volumes of the great museum libraries in Germany. The library of the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig is a reference library and is available to everyone.

In 1848 the Municipal Museum of the public was made available, were among the approximately 100 art works that the Council of the City of Leipzig had been appropriated by the Art Association, also 41 drawings and watercolors by contemporary artists and a small collection of old engravings and woodcuts. No one knew then that should be developed from these humble beginnings a collection of art, which has now grown to about 55 000 drawings and etchings. Are represented by numerous artists, only certain works or obese individual leaves in the Leipzig collection, by other masters kept almost the entire body of work. In addition to the "iconography" Anton van Dyck's the graphic work of William Hogarth, Daniel and Johann Friedrich Bause Chodowiecki are all in place. A special place in Leipzig, the work of Max Klinger, which enjoys the reputation of rare unity auszeichnet.Weltweites the collection of the drawings. Analogous to the art collection of the museum is the German draftsmanship of 18 to 20 Century represented an unusually rich and full. Outstanding is the collection of drawings by Max Beckmann. Many as 360 drawings from the estate of Mathilde Q. Beckmann are on permanent loan in the Prints Sammlung.In of drawing the second half of the 20th Century reflect the leaves of several generations, the dynamic variety of art-making of the GDR, which stand out in particular the work of the Leipzig artists through the span of their individual styles. Current exhibition Horst Janssen - "Playing With The Championship" - Through 6 February, 2011. Horst Janssen's vast oeuvre is estimated to be thousands of drawings, etchings, hundreds of watercolors, woodcuts, lithographs, leaflets, posters and some oil paintings. Given this abundance, the Leipzig exhibition does not claim to offer a representative overview. Rather, the central themes will be presented with high-quality leaves. Drawings from the Collection Brockstedt are also a testament to the long-standing friendship and ties of both men. It developed after the first exhibition in 1957 with woodblock prints in the gallery Janssens Brockstedt, such as the New Year's greeting to Janssens Brockstedt the year 1960/61 shows. In the 1960s, Janssen has developed into an outstanding artist, who also won international recognition as the graphics Price testified at the Biennale in Venice in 1968. The little-known, early pencil drawings Janssens are formally fascinating. They document a great wealth of expression, most are reluctant to put color display accents and black, brightness and white shades between.