Some 130 paintings dating from the period of mid-18th c. through the early 20th c., among them works by such masters as Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Richer, Ferdinand von Rayski and Joseph Koch will be featured at the German Painting from Classicism to Symbolism.
The collection of German painting from the 18th and 19th centuries at the National Museum in Wrocław ranks among the largest in Poland with the holdings of the National Museums in Warsaw and Poznań. “The collection’s history starts in the 1820s – explains Mariusz Hermansdorfer, Director of the National Museum in Wrocław – and is continued in the following century until the dramatic break of World War II which brings major losses. The project is undertaken again in the late 1950s-early 1960s with a changed focus. Thus the present collection both continues the efforts of our predecessors and re-interprets the underlying conception: it thus may be viewed as its creative continuation. Originally structured around the traditional conception of artistic genres (landscape, historical, portrait), today it centres on artistic merit as the principal criterion.”
The exhibition has been arranged chronologically and topically and it presents the dominating tendencies in German painting: Classicism, Romanticism, Biedermeier, Historicism, Realism, Impressionism, and Symbolism, and showcases the leading centres: Düsseldorf, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Karlsruhe, and Weimar. “We have exquisite works by most distinguished German artists – says Piotr Łukaszewicz, the exhibition’s curator – and also of artists active in Germany. Classicism is represented by Joseph Anton Koch, among others, the leading figure of the German art colony in Rome and author of the ground-breaking conception of heroic landscape. German Romanticism, an extremely important phenomenon in the history of European art, is showcased in the works of Ludwig Richter, a distinguished proponent of Late Romanticism, and the Norwegian Johan Christian Dahl, a close friend of Caspar David Friedrich with a strong connection to the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. The exhibition also features Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, one of the most interesting figures of Viennese Biedermeier: his Adoption shows the poignant scene of a poor mother entrusting her son to an affluent bourgeois family. Among the German Realists, Ferdinand von Rayski was a major figure and his Beater, featured at the exhibition, is widely regarded as a masterpiece and compared to Gustave Courbet’s works. The National Museum in Wrocław also has in its collection works by Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany. The exhibition closes with pieces painted in the early 20th century, including In the Evening, an early work by Wassily Kandisnky, the painter’s only work in Polish collections.