Municipal Picture Gallery (Kassel)
The Städtische Gemäldegalerie Kassels was a museum for contemporary art, which was located in the White Palais between 1921 and 1934 . In addition to works of art from the 19th century with a strong regional reference, an ambitious but little noticed presentation of international avant-garde emerged during the collection's short heyday . The remaining parts of the collection, which are owned by the City of Kassel, formed the basis of the New Gallery in Kassel after World War II .
history
The foundation of the collection was primarily based on two pillars. In 1896 Louise von Bose , daughter of the penultimate Hessian elector Wilhelm II , bequeathed her extensive art collection to the city of Kassel. The focus of this collection was on works of art from the vicinity of the former Hessian residence and was shown in a specially built Bose Museum .
The city of Kassel also collected works of art, albeit not in a targeted manner. The foundation stone of a ruler's gallery was laid in the town hall in the early modern times . A painting by Landgrave Philipp , painted by Cranach's pupil Michael Müller, from 1570 is still owned by the city today. Further purchases were made in the late 19th century, for example to support the economically troubled Kassel Art Association . The paintings bought by the city were not accessible to the general public and were partly used to decorate various offices in Kassel's town hall.
After the end of the First World War , numerous rooms in the princely White Palais on Kassel's Friedrichsplatz were available. On June 17, 1921, the then Lord Mayor Philipp Scheidemann opened the new museum. After the Bose Museum was closed, the city's collections could now be shown together for the first time.
Due to the different origins of the works of art shown, the gallery was unable to develop a clear profile during its short existence. The holdings of the Bose Foundation mainly included paintings with court references and regional works from the 19th century.
The city of Kassel - Lord Mayor Herbert Stadler made personal purchases in Paris and Berlin - considerably expanded the range of the exhibition in the second half of the 1920s. Stadler seems to have placed a special focus on French works of naive art . Wilhelm Uhde wrote in this context:
"You can imagine that I am following with the keenest interest the endeavors of a museum that is d'avant-garde in the best sense of the word."
In the 1920s, the Irish art dealer William A. Sinclair settled in Kassel , who sought proximity to the Kassel Secession and the Art Academy . Uncle Samuel Becketts loaned ten works of art to the city's picture gallery, which further sharpened the contemporary profile of the collection. The loan from Sinclair was returned shortly after the Nazis came to power . In addition, all paintings potentially considered to be “degenerate” works of art were removed from the collection. The museum itself was closed in 1934 to make way for an expansion of the German Wallpaper Museum located in the same building complex . From 1937 the drastically reduced holdings of the collection were rearranged and presented in the Kunsthaus am Ständeplatz.
Exhibited works (selection)
- Portrait of Countess Louise Bose as a child , August von der Embde , 1820, Bose Foundation, today Neue Galerie
- Meadow slope near Ornans , Gustave Courbet , 1862, acquired in 1928, now the Neue Galerie
- Poor Clare Church , Lyonel Feininger , acquired in 1927, today private property
- Dream of a Plant , Séraphine de Senlis , acquired in 1928
- La Foire de St. Germain, Place St. Sulpice , Louis Vivin , acquired in 1928
- Bathers at the lake , Lyonel Feininger , on loan from Sinclair, missing
- The Laughter Umberto Boccioni , 1913, on loan from Sinclair, today MoMA , New York
literature
- Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel (Hrsg.): The art to collect; The municipal art collection in Kassel . Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-931787-62-2
- Yannick Philipp Schwarz: The art collection of the city of Kassel in the Weimar Republic. In: ZHG Volume 121, Kassel 2016, ISSN 0342-3107 . Pp. 285-302.
swell
- ^ Margret Lemberg: Countess Louise Bose and the fate of her foundations and legacies (publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse, Volume 46). Elwert, Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-7829-1154-7 .
- ^ Wording according to: Schwarz: Kunstsammlung. P. 293.
- ↑ James Knowlson: First Encounters with German Expressionism. In: Therese Fischer-Seidel: The Unknown Beckett. Frankfurt 2003, p. 73.
- ^ Helmut Kramm: The municipal gallery and its reorganization. In: Hessenland, volume 48, 1937, pp. 144ff.
- ↑ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80199 Object description on the MoMA website
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 51.8 " N , 9 ° 29 ′ 47" E