Two exhibitions
dal 16/4/2008 al 20/9/2008
Segnalato da
16/4/2008
Two exhibitions
Stadel Museum, Frankfurt
Max Beckmann: 8 Bronzes. Executed around 1935 during a period of political constraints, this piece reveals the artist's defiant aesthetic as much as it reflects his melancholy interpretations of the great world theatre, his love of vaudeville with its performers and acrobats. The fourth exhibition in the Focus on series revolves around a Middle Rhenish panel: St. Jerome, 1480, by the Master of the Housebook and/or his circle.
Max Beckmann: 8 Bronzes
Curator: Dr. Sabine Schulze
Max Beckmann’s (1884 – 1950) achievements as a painter have been on view at the Städel Museum since the 1920s when he served as professor at the Städel School. His pictures came to the gallery “fresh” from the studio with great frequency until the Nazi confiscation campaign destroyed the original ensemble in 1937. In the post-war period, this gap was filled again in part by extensive fundraising campaigns and generous donations.
The spectrum of Beckmann’s works in the Städel today ranges from his first self-portrait of the year 1905, still very impressionist in manner, to Backstage, the painting that was still drying on the easel when the artist died of a heart attack in New York’s Central Park in 1950. Recently, an important bronze has been acquired for the collection: the depiction of a Female Dancer (The Splits). Executed around 1935 during a period of political constraints, this piece measuring 17.5 x 70 x 25 cm reveals Beckmann’s defiant aesthetic as much as it reflects his melancholy interpretations of the great world theatre, his love of vaudeville with its performers and acrobats.
The exhibition is the first in any German museum to show all eight sculptures produced by Beckmann in the course of his artistic career.
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Focus on: Master of the Housebook (circle)
Curator: Dr. Bodo Brinkmann
The fourth exhibition in the “Focus on” series revolves around a Middle Rhenish panel from the Städel Museum collection: St. Jerome (St. Jerome in his Study), 1480, Inv. no. 1215, by the Master of the Housebook and/or his circle. There is a great deal more to this small and unassuming work than meets the eye at first sight. The still-life-like elements in St. Jerome’s study bear witness to the influence of Old Netherlandish painting, which had developed the principle of “disguised symbolism”, a strategy for alluding to an entire secondary motif or storyline. The manner in which that happens here is quite astonishing. It is not so much the legend of the saint himself but that of the lion, St. Jerome’s loyal companion, that is conjured up by the hearth and the firewood.
This unusual augmentation of a pictorial tradition points to a great inventor: the master of the medieval Housebook, in whose studio the work was executed. With his pioneering art, he inspired the entire region between Speyer and Koblenz. Bringing the circumstances in the fifteenth-century artist’s studio back to life for the viewer, the exhibition also explores the question as to which of the master’s employees actually carried out the Städel panel.
Sponsored by: Schering Foundation
Stadel Museum
Schaumainkai 63 - Frankfurt