Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Hamburger Kunsthalle

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Bildelf by Georg Baselitz)

    Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Bildelf by Georg Baselitz)

    And another post in Julian’s seemingly endless photos of artworks of which he understands very little, but comments anyway.

    This delicate little thing is called “paintingeleven” which isn’t the most revealing title. Painted in 1992 and purchased in 1997, this artwork is by Georg Baselitz who was born in 1938 and is still alive today. Wikipedia note that this artist “is seen as a revolutionary painter as he draws the viewer’s attention to his works by making them think and sparking their interest”. I can spend some time looking with my unexpert eye at a painting and try to put some meaning to it, but it’s fair to say that I didn’t understand this at all.

    However, the Kunsthalle is prepared for this, and has made an huge effort to add narrative to artworks for those who want to get some understanding of them. So, Baselitz started in 1991 to paint large canvasses and the painting name is simply the order in which he created his works. I like that sense of order. The gallery seem to struggle from here, they describe the red and white fields on which two figures (the black lines) are painted. I’m not convinced, although apparently he painted them with his fingers. Anyway, from here the four green lines are dripped from a higher platform, with the paint transferred to them by Baselitz getting into a tub of green paint with his shoes on.

    I still have no idea, although it occurs to me that this would fit into the Five Guys red and white background style….

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Forgery by Óscar Domínguez)

    Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Forgery by Óscar Domínguez)

    The gallery has now made a little exhibit about this painting, which is a forgery that they managed to accidentally buy. I suppose it’s easier for galleries to do this in retrospect, they can blame a previous curator more easily…

    The gallery purchased this painting in 1957, which was meant to be ‘Mystery and Melancholy of a Street’ by Giorgio de Chirico. Now, this shouldn’t have been too difficult, as de Chirico (1888-1978) was still alive, but there was a little problem and that was that he had seemingly got a bit confused. This had led to him painting artworks and dating them incorrectly to a previous date, as well as declaring perfectly authentic works as fakes. Anyway, he declared this painting as fake in 1970, which I can imagine moderately irritated the curators.

    On this occasion though, he was correct, he hadn’t painted it. Someone called Óscar Domínguez had faked it, but that was only discovered after the gallery had conducted numerous tests. Perhaps those tests might have been better before they bought it, but I imagine scientific advances made that much easier in the 1980s. Anyway, now the gallery has a different story to tell, which is that through careful analysis they are able to prove that some works are fakes and not as they might seem. And since every artwork has a story, this made this perhaps more interesting than it would have been if de Chirico had actually painted it.

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Self-Portrait by Franz Nölken)

    Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Self-Portrait by Franz Nölken)

    Visiting art galleries in Germany is interesting to me as they have to deal with the challenges of the Second World War, but often in a different way to those in Poland and other occupied territories. I’ve visited tens of galleries and museums in Poland, most of which were raided by the Nazis and their collections either pinched by corrupt officials and sold for profit, destroyed or shipped back to the Fatherland. Even today, there are tens of thousands of paintings, artworks and collectables which haven’t been found or which are residing in collections where they probably shouldn’t be. Poland isn’t alone, this happened throughout Europe and the level of destruction was enormous, but over 500,000 Polish artworks were looted and many are still in Germany.

    In Germany, this all presented a different problem, which was that artworks were bring procured cheaply or just given to galleries. Sometimes it’s the case that artworks were forcibly taken from Jewish families, or brought back from occupied territories, other times it’s less clear cut, Jewish families selling property as they wanted to flee Germany. But very rarely were artworks willingly sold by anyone at this time, it became a necessity for many families.

    This was a huge problem for curators at German museums, they had seen some of their collections raided as the Nazis considered it ‘degenerate art’, but it was clear they didn’t particularly want their artworks destroyed. So, rather than see them burnt as happened on some occasions, other galleries such as the Basel Museum in Switzerland tried to buy artworks up. Much else was sold at auction, some legitimate sales from galleries who were told to dispose of items, other times it was that of families forced to sell their belongings.

    So, this left museums and galleries such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle in a dilemma, as they saw paintings and artworks arriving into their building. I’m sure at the time there wasn’t much that could be done, but as the decades have gone by, the gallery has wanted to do the right thing.

    This is the self-portrait painted by Franz Nölken, a German artist who was killed just before the end of the First World War. The artwork was painted in 1904 and it was owned by a Jewish family named von der Porten. They decided to flee to Belgium in 1938 and they tried to sell this painting to the Kunsthalle, who rejected it. However, in 1939, the gallery acquired it from a private dealer in exchange for another artwork by the same artist that they had in their collections. It’s not known how much the art dealer paid for it, but it was likely only a fraction of its worth at the time.

    This is a photo of the artwork when it was owned by the von der Porten family, who were able to flee Hamburg. Sadly, Frieda von der Porten and Dr. Ernst von der Porten both killed themselves in 1940 when the Nazi hatred they thought they had escaped from engulfed them once again.

    With both of the owners dead, this artwork remained in the collections of the gallery. But it has recently decided to pro-actively find ancestors of these artworks, as part of the country’s “fair and just settlement”. With this artwork, the gallery has been unable to find any descendants, although its work continues.

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Portrait of a Sergeant by Ernest Meissonier)

    The French artist painted this artwork in 1874, towards the end of his career. This appears to be a painting of the French military from the end of the eighteenth century, with the soldiers wearing the chenille helmet from the period. The artist was also notable for his paintings of Napoleon himself, as well as the military during the Napoleonic Wars.

    The Kunsthalle put it much better than I ever could:

    “Meissonier, whose history painting enjoyed great popularity in France, as the early impressionism still met with widespread rejection, presented here six soldiers from the period after the French Revolution. They still wear the uniform of the Ancien Régime, while their helmet already with the badge the Republic is provided. The casual incident on the barracks yard shows a draftsman with a soldier standing in full gear and proud pose model. While the artist and the dog sitting next to him are staring at the sergeant with his saber, four other uniformed men are spellbound in the creation of the sketch. Noteworthy is Meissonier’s finely painted depiction, which impresses with its level of detail and the convincing reproduction of various textures.”

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Capriccio with Roman Ruins by Canaletto)

    I didn’t know what a Capriccio was and I just assumed it was just some place in Italy (although it also sounds like a delicious dish from Prezzo), but it’s actually a collection of buildings or ruins just placed together for the purpose of a artwork. Apparently this was a popular art form during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although I’m surprised people didn’t want something a little more realistic.

    Canaletto painted this in 1740, pretty much in the middle of his career, and it seems that there is a problem throughout many of his works in establishing what was real and what was artificial. This is the only work of this artist that the Kunsthalle hold, other than a series of 31 etchings which I don’t think are on display.

    I think I prefer his paintings of Venice, Rome and London…..

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Three Women in Church by Wilhelm Leibl)

    I’m not going to pretend that I’ve ever heard of Wilhelm Leibl, but I thought this painting had a bit of depth to it. He is apparently one of the most important German realist painters and he lived from 1844 until 1900, with this artwork being painted in around 1878 to 1882. The aim of the artist was to portray three different generations in a state of prayer and contemplation.

    I have no knowledge of this other than having read it on-line, but this is also the most important work which was painted by Leibl. The Kunsthalle obtained the painting in 1906 and it’s apparently a forerunner of the ‘neue sachlichkeit’ generation, or the ‘new objectivity’ movement.

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (Sturzacker by Caspar David Friedrich)

     

    This is part of my “paintings which look interesting to Julian” series, which is based on absolutely no artistic ability on my behalf. This painting is by Caspar David Friedrich, who according to Wikipedia (and of course therefore this must be entirely true) is “generally considered the most important German artist of his generation”. The German Post Office used his work on one of his stamps, an honour he’d have no doubt been thrilled with if he had been alive to see it.

    Friedrich lived from 1774 until 1840, with this artwork of a ploughed field having been painted in around 1830. Unfortunately, I can’t find out anything more interesting about this particular painting, other than the Kunsthalle obtained it in 1905.

     

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (The Man of Sorrows by Lucas Cranach the Elder)

    The artist of this work, which has the longer name of the “Man of Sorrows between the Virgin and Saint John” lived between 1472 and 1553 and was also a friend of Martin Luther. One of the best known paintings of Martin Luther was painted by Cranach, and he became known as of the most important artists of the Reformation period.

    I’ve wondered why museums are quite cagey about the provenance of items in their collections, as when paintings such as this go on sale it’s often known where it has been for several centuries. All the gallery says about this one is that it was purchased in 1943 and was restored in 2015.

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (The Presentation of Christ in the Temple by Hans Holbein)

    The theme of this painting is when Jesus Christ was taken to the Temple of Jerusalem for him to be inducted into Judaism. It was painted by Hans Holbein, the older one and not the younger one of Henry VIII fame, in 1500 or 1501 and is painted on a pine panel.

    The Kunsthalle acquired the work in 1912 and it was originally part of the high altarpiece of the Dominican Monastery in Frankfurt. I’d be interested to know where this artwork has been for centuries, as the monastery came under municipal ownership by the nineteenth century and it was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

  • Hamburg – Hamburger Kunsthalle (The Man in Stocks by Ernst Barlach)

    Although I thought at first this was a bronze sculpture, it’s actually made out of oak. I hadn’t previously heard of Ernst Barlach, although it has transpired that there is a museum dedicated to him and his works which is located in the suburbs of Hamburg. If I come to the city again, I will certainly meander along down to see it.

    Barlach became anti-war following the First World War and this later set him on a collision course with the Nazis in the 1930s, who described his art as degenerate. They banned him from working as a sculptor and he could no longer be a member of art academies. He died in October 1938 after having seen many museums in the country have to remove, and sometimes destroy, his artworks in 1937.