Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus

The Morgan Library & Museum will present Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus, celebrating the extraordinary loan of this important early masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) from the Galleria Borghese in Rome. On view from January 16 through April 19, 2026, the exhibition showcases what can be considered Caravaggio’s first masterpiece alongside a group of ten works that place the painting in context, from the artist’s influences to those he influenced. Trained in his native Lombardy, Caravaggio brought to Rome a tradition of naturalism that stretched back to Leonardo da Vinci’s work in Milan. He combined this tradition with a revolutionary approach to painting that shattered the illusion of art and celebrated the artifice of the studio. Boy with a Basket of Fruit (ca. 1595), in which these key elements of Caravaggio’s art come together for the first time, marks the beginning of a revolution in Italian painting. 

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610), Boy with a Basket of Fruit, ca. 1595. Oil on canvas. Galleria Borghese, Rome © Galleria Borghese / ph. Mauro Coen.

Caravaggio captures the imagination in a way that almost no other artist can,” said Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “We are exceptionally fortunate to be able to bring this masterpiece from the Galleria Borghese to share with visitors in New York for the first time in the twenty-first century, accompanied by works that illuminate his impact on the field of painting.”

“Boy with a Basket of Fruit marks a turning point in Italian painting,” said John Marciari, Charles W. Engelhard Curator, Department Head of Drawings and Prints, and Director of Curatorial Affairs. “It is a linchpin between the naturalism of Caravaggio’s sources and his radical interventions in exposing the artifice of painting. To see this painting in context is to understand the revolution it represents.” 

With his parted lips, flushed ears, and shirt slipping from his shoulder, the boy in the painting is far from the idealized figures typically depicted in Roman painting at the time. Caravaggio painted neither a god nor a saint, but an artist’s model, captured on the canvas and seemingly offered to us for examination, much like the fruit the boy presents to the viewer. 

The exhibition juxtaposes this remarkable work with some precedents for its naturalism, including earlier paintings from Milan, such as

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593), Four Seasons in One Head, ca. 1590. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Fund.

Other precedents include 

Boy Drinking (ca. 1583) by Caravaggio’s slightly older contemporary Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). 

A significant loan from a private collection, this painting has never been on public view. 

Also exhibited are two works by Caravaggio’s early mentors and influences: a drawing by Simone Peterzano (ca. 1535–1599), who was the young Caravaggio’s teacher in Milan, and a study by Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640), in whose studio Caravaggio worked in Rome. 

Although Caravaggio would eventually turn away from preparatory drawings in favor of painting directly on the canvas, these works provide context for his training. 

The installation also includes a selection of works that document the powerful impact Caravaggio had on Roman art, including 

Rutilio Manetti (1571–1639), A Life Study: A Monk Sleeping against a Pile of Books, ca. 1616. Red chalk. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, purchased on the Fairfax Murray Society Fund; 2019.102. Photography by Janny Chiu.  

and

Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1587–1625) Basket of Fruit, ca. 1620 Oil on canvas The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Errol M. Rudman, 2020, 2020.263.5.

These show the ways in which the artists who followed Caravaggio continued to reveal the fiction of art, from highlighting the real-life models who sat for them to emphasizing the imperfections in the subjects of their still-life paintings. 

The exhibition concludes with the Morgan’s remarkable portrait drawing of Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577–1633) by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). 

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, ca. 1632 Red chalk over graphite The Morgan Library & Museum, IV, 176. Photography by Steven H. Crossot.

Borghese, the collector largely responsible for the Galleria Borghese, was the early owner of Boy with a Basket of Fruit, which has been part of the Borghese collection since 1607. 

Caravaggio’s “Boy with a Basket of Fruit” in Focus is curated by John Marciari, Charles W. Engelhard Curator, Department Head of Drawings and Prints, and Director of Curatorial Affairs. 

An illustrated brochure with an introductory essay written by Marciari will be offered in the gallery at no charge to visitors thanks to the generosity of the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC). 

Organization and Sponsorship Caravaggio's "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" in Focus is organized by the Morgan Library & Museum in collaboration with the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture (FIAC).

MORE IMAGES

Attributed to Marco d’Oggiono (ca. 1467– 1524) Girl with Cherries, ca. 1491–95 Oil on panel The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890, 91.26.5. 

Giuseppe Cesari, known as the Cavaliere d’Arpino (1568–1640) Study of a Young Man, ca. 1594–95 Black chalk The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of János Scholz, 1979.47. Photography by Steven H. Crossot. 

Francesco Rustici, known as Rustichino (1592–1626) Head of a Youth, ca. 1620 Black and white chalk on light brown paper The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of János Scholz, 1979.50. Photography by Steven H. Crossot. 

Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning: Networks of Surrealism

 Neue Nationalgalerie 

17 October 2025 – 1 March 2026

A special exhibition of the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Zentralarchiv – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

In cooperation with the Zentralarchiv, the Neue Nationalgalerie pre- sents Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning: Networks of Surrealism. Prov- enances from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection. One hundred years after the “First Surrealist Manifesto” (1924), this exhibition gives new insights into the ramified networks of this international art movement of the 20th century. The focus is on both the histories of the art works and on life stories of Surrealism’s central artists, deal- ers, and collectors.

On the basis of a representative selection of paintings and sculptures by artists such as Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Dorothea Tanning, the exhibition showcases the findings of a research project on the provenances of art- works from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, which was realized jointly with the State of Berlin. The exhibition not only maps out the mani- fold paths taken by Surrealist artworks predominantly during the 1930s and 1940s, but also sheds light on how historical circumstances, personal relationships, and social networks contributed to the spread of the interna- tional movement.

Starting in January 2023, around 100 artworks from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection – all created up until 1945 – were systematically ex- amined with a view to their origin and the succession of their owners. The aim was to ensure that none of them constituted cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution, especially from Jewish owners. These works include important paintings by artists like Salvador Dalí, Yves Tan- guy, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, Tamara de Lempicka, and Dorothea Tanning. The collector couple acquired the works between the 1970s and the 2000s from galleries, dealers, and auctioneers around the world. Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch gifted their excellent collection to the State of Berlin in 2010, which then made it available to the Neue Na- tionalgalerie as a permanent loan. Surrealist works and Abstract Expres- sionism from the New York School form the heart of the collection.

The findings of the project carried out at the Zentralarchiv for the purpose of investigating and verifying the provenances of the artworks are being presented in this exhibition.

In three sections, the show traces the eventful paths of the paintings and sculptures, which took them from Paris via Brussels and other European cities into exile in Mexico and the USA during the Nazi period and the Second World War. The circle of Surrealists was characterized by its complex relationships in which friendship, love, and business connections often overlapped. Thus, the circulation of works was marked by less for- malized transactions. When Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, nu- merous Surrealist artists along with their collectors and dealers were forced to flee. Here, too, it was helpful to have connections: many left Eu- rope and emigrated to the USA and elsewhere; others failed to secure an exit visa and had to go into hiding in the unoccupied part of France. Some were able to take their works with them, while others had to leave them behind.

This phase that was characterized by changes in location is directly re- flected in the provenances of these artworks. In various ways, the biog- raphies of the individual objects testify to friendships and business rela- tions and in equal measure to loss, persecution, and new beginnings. Go- ing far beyond the individual stories of the artworks, these object biog- raphies offer deep insights into the complex networks of the Surrealist movement as well as into the great political challenges of the time.

This special exhibition is held in the lower story of the Neue Nationalgaler- ie (reserved for the permanent collection) and brings together a selection of 26 works from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, including Max Ernst’s Gloomy Forest with Bird (1927) and his Painting for Young People (1943), André Masson’s large painting Massacre (1931/32), Leonor Fini’s Two Women (1939), Joan Miró’s Arrow Piercing Smoke (1926), and Dor- othea Tanning’s Voltage (1942).

Issued by the Zentralarchiv, a booklet in the series Guides to Prove- nance Research will be published in German at the start of the exhibition. It presents 15 object biographies as examples and documents the prove- nances of all 26 works in the exhibition, as researched in the project. With the opening of the exhibition, the findings of the provenance research pro- ject will be published online at recherche.smb.museum

Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning is curated by Maike Steinkamp, Curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Lisa Hackmann and Sven Haase, Research Associates for Provenance Research at the Zentralarchiv. Curatorial As- sistant: Ricarda Bergmann, Neue Nationalgalerie. Research Assistant: Sara Sophie Biever, Zentralarchiv.

IMAGES

Dorothea Tanning, Spannung, 1942, Öl auf Leinwand, 29 x 30,9 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Joan Miró, Der Pfeil durchstößt den Rauch, 1926, Öl auf Leinwand, 40 x 56 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Leonor Fini, Zwei Frauen, 1939, Öl auf Leinwand, 34 x 24,5 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Max Ernst, Der Kopf des “Hausengels“, 1937, Öl auf Leinwand, 65,3 x 78,2 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

André Masson, Der Jäger, 1927, Rückseite des Gemäldes; Foto: © Lisa Hackmann, 2025

Max Ernst, Gemälde für junge Leute, 1943, Öl auf Leinwand, 60,5 x 76,5 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

René Magritte, Die Terrasse von Atahualpa, 1925/1926, Öl auf Leinwand, 50 x 35 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Victor Brauner, Das Handtier, 1943, Öl auf Leinwand, 54 x 65 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

André Masson, Der Jäger, 1927, Sand und Öl auf Leinwand, 41 x 16,6 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

André Masson, Massaker, 1931, Öl auf Leinwand, 120 x 160 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schenkung Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch an das Land Berlin 2010, Foto: Jochen Littkemann, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

The Scharf Collection Goya – Monet – Cézanne – Bonnard – Grosse

 

Alte Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

24 October 2025 – 15 February 2026

The Scharf Collection, one of the most significant private art collec- tions in Germany, is being showcased in a large-scale exhibition for the very first time. The collection primarily consists of French art from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as international contempo- rary artworks. The exhibition in the Alte Nationalgalerie presents a selection of some 150 items, including prominent artworks by the likes of Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, and takes visitors on a journey through the collection: from Goya and French Realism to the French Impressionists and Cubists to contemporary art. One special highlight is a selection of prints by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which have been almost fully preserved in the collection.

The Scharf Collection is a direct continuation of what was once Otto Gers- tenberg’s extensive private Berlin-based art collection, which encompas- sed the dawn of modernism with artworks by Goya to the pioneers of the French avant-garde with works by Gustave Courbet and Edgar Degas. Gerstenberg’s daughter Margarethe Scharf was able to preserve the ma- jority of the collection despite considerable war losses suffered during the Second World War. His grandsons Walther and Dieter Scharf each went on to establish their own collections based on the artworks that had been bequeathed to them, with Dieter Scharf focussing on surrealism. His coll- ection has been on permanent loan to the Nationalgalerie in the Samm- lung Scharf-Gerstenberg in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg since 2008.

Walther Scharf and his wife Eve – in collaboration with their son René – further consolidated the French focus of the collection, acquiring works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Today, René Scharf and his wife Christiane have shifted their focus to contemporary art and harbour a particular interest in the ways in which the medium of painting has expanded over time and the relations- hip between representational and abstract imagery. Against this backdrop, René and Christiane Scharf continue to modernise the family tradition ofart collecting by acquiring works by Sam Francis, Sean Scully, Daniel Richter and Katharina Grosse.

An exhibition of the Alte Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in cooperation with the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf.

Accompanying the exhibition is a richly illustrated catalogue published by DCV – Dr. Cantz'sche Verlagsgesellschaft, edited by the Alte National- galerie and the Kunstpalast: The Scharf Collection. Goya – Monet – Cézanne – Bonnard – Grosse, hardcover with embossing, 240 pages, 239 illustrations, 23.5 x 28.5 cm, German, ISBN 978-3-96912-247-1, 48€ (bookshops), 38€ (museum)

Exhibition Texts
Painting Modern Life: Impressionism

Hardly any other artistic movement of the 19th century is as revered as French Impressionism. With a swift application of thick swatches of paint and a new attention to light, colour, and atmosphere, the “painters of modern life” (Charles Baudelaire) sought to capture the transience of the moment. The Scharf Collection contains magnificent examples of this art. Otto Gerstenberg concentrated on collecting French art, and Walther, Eve and René Scharf have continued with this focus.

For his landscapes, Monet was interested in the interplay of light and colour. In his paintings Steep Cliffs near Dieppe (1897) and Waterloo Bridge (1903), which are both part of painting series, Monet was investigating how his subject changed with the light.

Auguste Renoir was primarily dedicated to portraiture and depictions of society. His portraits of women reflect the ideal of the modern, elegant Parisienne.

Edgar Degas was also famous for his depictions of women. He often showed them backstage or in everyday situations, for example washing or combing their hair – usually unposed and observed from a distance. His focus here was on light, posture and composition.

A generation later, Pierre Bonnard would reconnect with this intimacy and sensuality when depicting his wife Marthe in the bathtub.

It can be said that no other painter of Post-Impressionism engaged with landscape painting as radically as Paul Cézanne. In his works, he emphasizes the texture of the painting surface and the basic shapes of pictorial elements. His experiments were groundbreaking for modernism.

Between Horror and Spectacle: Francisco de Goya

Francisco de Goya (1746–1828)
Zu Recht oder zu Unrecht / Rightly or Wrongly, Blatt 2 / Plate no. 2 The Scharf Collection 

In the 19th century, interest in Spanish art grew in France. Many artists, such as Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas and Honoré Daumier, were enthusiastic about Francisco de Goya, and interest in his art also grew in Germany. Collectors in Berlin were eager to acquire Spanish art, and in this spirit Otto Gerstenberg purchased drawings, watercolours and the four large series of prints by Goya: Disparates, Caprichos, Desastres de la Guerra and Tauromaquia.

The bullfighting scenes in Tauromaquia fascinated Central European audiences, bringing them face to face with the drama of this Spanish custom. The series was interpreted as both approving of the national sport, which Goya held in high regard, but also as a critical depiction. Some identified literary references, for example to Don Nicolas Fernández de Moratín’s history of bullfighting. And some saw the bulls as representing Spanish resistance against the Napoleonic occupation.

This political dimension became even more evident in Desastres, which Goya began in 1810. Although the artist did not explicitly reference the war of independence against France, the connection is plain to see. Unsparingly, he shows the cruelty of war: death, torture, desperation and

hunger. The series was not published until forty years after Goya’s death because it was not reconcilable with his role as a Spanish court painter who also had French clients.

Perceptive Observers: Art between Romanticism and Social Criticism

The decades prior to Impressionism were marked by a number of different artistic currents. Eugène Delacroix is considered the key exponent of French Romanticism. The paintings of his in the collection are characterized by the way in which they connect emotional intensity and political symbolism. 

King Henry IV and Gabrielle d’Estrées (1826) shows the 16th century king and his lover and political advisor Gabrielle d’Estrées at the French court.

The Barbizon School was an important, anti-academic artistic movement in France. 

Camille Corot (1796–1875)
Ein Bauernhof in Dardagny / Farm in Dardagny, 1850–1860 Öl auf Holz / Oil on wood
The Scharf Collection 

Beginning around 1830, painters such as Camille Corot focused on working in nature, en plein air. They contributed significantly to changes in European art and influenced the development of Impressionism.

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) Der Philosoph Trapadoux beim Blättern in einem Album in Courbets Atelier / The Philosopher Trapadoux Leafing through an Album in Courbet’s Studio, 1849 Öl auf Leinwand / Oil on canvas The Scharf Collection 

Gustave Courbet understood himself to be a realist painter. His involvement in the Paris Commune uprising in 1871 brought him a prison sentence. He painted many of his still lifes in the Sainte-Pélagie prison, where no live models were permitted.

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) The Legislative Belly: View of the Ministerial Benches in the Prostituted Chamber of 1834, 1834. Kreidelithografie auf Velin / Chalk lithograph on vellum The Scharf Collection

Honoré Daumier was another socially critical artist. His paintings are often characterized by a satirical treatment of social and political subjects. Using expressive strokes and a dark palette, he portrayed the life of the working-class population. His sculptures of the series Les Parlementaires, with their exaggerated facial features, caricature the French parliamentarians – a biting commentary on the political elite of his time.

Prophet of Colour: Pierre Bonnard

When Pierre Bonnard began his art studies in Paris in 1888, the art world was at a turning point. Many young artists were seeking new forms of expression and tended to resist academic traditions. These artists also increasingly distanced themselves from Impressionism, which was enjoying success. Bonnard, working with Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis and other like-minded artists, founded the Nabis group, who – in reference to the Hebrew derivation of their name – understood themselves as “prophets” of a new form of painting. They wanted to communicate more than visible reality, instead putting a strong emphasis on expressing feelings and thoughts.

The Scharf Collection contains outstanding paintings by Bonnard, including his central work The Large Bathtub, in which the artist portrays his wife Marthe, and Place Clichy, showing the bustling activity on this square near his studio in Paris.

Pierre Bonnard’s work is a connecting point where the Scharf Collection and the collections at the Nationalgalerie tie into and complement each other. The painting T

he Family of Claude Terrasse in the Garden at the Nationalgalerie assumes a special position in the artist’s oeuvre. Not only is it the largest work he had created up to that point, it is also one of his very few folding screens. Working with an originally Asian piece of furniture, Bonnard was combining Eastern and Western painting traditions, seen here in the planar composition of pictorial space and bodies and in the design of fabrics and landscape inspired by Japanese ornamentation.

Pioneer of Modern Lithography: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
Die sitzende Clownin, Fräulein Chao-U-Kao, 1. Tafel / The Seated Clowness, Mademoiselle Cha-u-ka-o, Plate no. 1The Scharf Collection 

A significant part of the Scharf Collection is the body of prints – complete except for only very few gaps – by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which was acquired by Otto Gerstenberg. This is the largest Toulouse-Lautrec collection worldwide.

Toulouse-Lautrec began working with the still young technology of lithography in 1891. Images could be drawn directly on a stone and printed in large editions at low cost. His innovative formal language made the artist a pioneer of modern lithography.

The French artist came from a wealthy, aristocratic family, but he turned his attention to the imagery of the stage and the brothel, which were held in poor regard. It has been established that the artist spent a good deal of time in Parisian brothels and even lived there for weeks. His lithographic portfolio Elles in particular testifies to his empathetic view of the women who worked there. He depicts them not in an eroticized way, but carrying out familiar, everyday activities.

From among his brothel works, a portrait-like sheet titled Clownesse Cha-U-Kao is particularly striking. As a clowness, she was practicing a male-dominated profession and was stepping forward self-confidently onstage as in life. Provocatively, Toulouse-Lautrec shows her with her legs spread wide and gazing directly at the viewer.

Innovation in Poster Design: Toulouse-Lautrec as a Graphic

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
Moulin Rouge, La Goulue (Zustand II / State II), 1891 Lithografie auf Papier / Lithograph on paper
The Scharf Collection 

Artist Toulouse-Lautrec’s fame was earned through his posters. With their vibrant colours, they advertised for concert cafés and variety theatres like the Moulin Rouge but also for books, magazines, businesses and products. His designs were like none seen before: He worked with large surfaces, curving lines, stark contrasts and a spraying technique. The first poster maker to show and advertise specific stage artists, he portrayed the likes of La Goulue, Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant, thus contributing to the cult of celebrity at the time.

Sometimes, the artist turned stars into an artistic subject in their own right. His depictions of the dancer Loïe Fuller, for instance, have little in common with portraits: Instead of personal features, he shows only her flowing fabrics moving in sweeping circles through colourful light. He applied watercolours to these two-colour prints and completed them with an application of silver or gold dust.

In addition to his abstract subjects, there are works that impart the atmosphere onstage and backstage. Based on a painting, The Grand Theatre Box likely shows the profile view of Amande Brazier, the owner of a popular lesbian bar, attending a performance with a prostitute. In the neighbouring theatre box sits the driver of the Baron of Rothschild, whom the artist knew. The person in the middle, rather than looking at the stage, gazes at the neighbouring theatre boxes. In this way, the act of looking becomes itself a subject. Another aspect at work here is that the theatre box is not only enjoyed by privileged members of the upper middle class, but also by strong characters who stand at the edge of society.

Sharp Eyes and Biting Commentary: Toulouse-Lautrec as a Witness of His Time

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was an attentive observer of what was happening around him. The extent to which he saw himself and his attentiveness as part of a tradition is evident in his design of the cover for a new edition of Desastres de la Guerra, in which Goya had captured the horrors of war.

Toulouse-Lautrec designed a great number of advertisements, for example a poster for his friend the photographer Paul Sescau. With a wink in his eye, the artist pokes fun at the new medium’s claim to objective realism. With Toulouse-Lautrec, the photographer remains invisible, his model is turned away from him and is wearing a face mask and a dress covered in question marks.

The skating figure of Misia Nathanson is staged in a similarly sophisticated manner. She was married to the publisher of the art and literary magazine La Revue blanche, for whose covers she often posed. The picture for the magazine La Vache enragée shows the titular “enraged cow” which, representing revolutionary artists, chases a wealthy bourgeois man. However, in extreme cases, attacks on the state order could end under the guillotine’s blade, as Toulouse-Lautrec illustrates in an advertisement for the daily newspaper Le Matin. And Toulouse-Lautrec also designed the poster for a book by the journalist Victor Joze, which portrayed Berlin – the “Babylon of Germany” – as both militaristic and corrupt.

Fragmentations of Everyday Life: Cubism

After Impressionism, Cubism was the next groundbreaking innovation in modern art. With their paintings and collages, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and later also Juan Gris had the most decisive influence on this style. Henri Laurens, working in the medium of sculpture, shaped Cubism with artistic expression of his own.

The goal of Cubism was to represent the multi-layered and multi-dimensional nature of reality by deconstructing shapes and breaking them down to their basic geometric forms. In painting, this resulted in works which show subjects from different viewing angles at the same time and which use collaged materials to combine and connect different forms of reality. A significant example of this is Picasso’s collage Guitar and Sheet Music.

Everyday objects like bottles, glasses, newspapers and playing cards were elevated to pictorial subject matter. Fragmented in Cubist style, they offered new perspectives on worlds of the everyday like cafés as social meeting points or the artist studio as a place of creativity. Following this first phase marked by fragmentation, decomposition and systematic analysis, so-called Analytical Cubism, artists experimented increasingly with joining surfaces and forms together: Exponents of Synthetic Cubism include Juan Gris and Fernand Léger. As the latter had a great fondness of cylindrical shapes, he was also referred to as a “Tubist”.

The ideas of Cubism had a decisive influence on conceptions of space, form and abstraction in modernism.

Colour, Form and Gesture: Figuration and Abstraction after 1945

After 1945, art evolved in a tension between figuration and abstraction.

Sam Francis and Maurice Estève are prime examples of the development of abstraction after 1945. In their bright and radiant pictures, colour itself becomes a vehicle of expression. Estève was among the artists of the Nouvelle École de Paris who were very actively supported by the collector Walther Scharf, who sometimes also sold their art. Scharf’s son René, who worked in New York for a long time, complemented the collection’s French orientation with a North American perspective when he added works by Sam Francis.

Since his relocation to Berlin, René Scharf and his wife Christiane have been expanding the collection by adding contemporary works, including from Berlin’s art scene.

Through its sombre palette and the zebra head that is larger than life, Jonas Burgert’s Night Trick evokes elements of the so-called Dark Romanticism of the late 19th century, which engaged with the uncanny and the supernatural. The hybrid creatures seen in Katja Novitskova’s Earthware are also located between reality and nightmare, while in Martin Eder’s work the cute and the monstrous appear side by side. His Narcissus works with the ancient myth of the young man who falls in love with his mirror image. Here, however, the youth is replaced by a cat, a subject that has been very popular in social networks.

A Collection for the Future: Aspects of Contemporary Art

The artistic positions shown in this room are connected by material, movement, colour and form. Gotthard Graubner described his cushion-like works as “colour-space bodies”. The deep impression of colour they create is achieved through multiple paint applications on a highly absorbent fabric surface. The painting shown here is one of the smaller works. All of Graubner’s cushion-like works have in common that they walk the line between panel painting and object and create the experience of pure colour.

Katharina Grosse was Graubner’s student at the art academy in Düsseldorf. She sometimes works with very large surfaces – going across entire rooms, the roofs of houses and façades. With the two paintings in the Scharf Collection, she moves within the confines of the painting surface, with the paint applications and the paints themselves becoming the event.

Anselm Reyle works with applications of objects, foils and mirrors on the image area, extending it into three-dimensional space. The functional and decorative materials he uses are elements taken from consumer society. For Reyle, they become the material of his artistic contemplation about what painting can be today.

The sculptor Tony Cragg shares with Graubner and Grosse his close connection to the Düsseldorf art academy. He taught there and also served as its director for several years. Movement has always played an important role in his sculptures, ensuing from his keen interest in natural structures and processes of organic growth.

In Sight! Lovis Corinth, the Nationalgalerie and the “Degenerate Art

Museumsinsel Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie 

Through January 2026

To mark the 100th anniversary of Lovis Corinth’s death, the Alte Nationalgalerie is staging a comprehensive exhibition that addresses the fate of both Corinth’s artworks and those of his wife, the painter Charlotte Berend-Corinth, in the collection of the Nationalgalerie. The exhibition focusses on the various provenances of the artworks on display: the holdings of the Nationalgalerie are supplemented by artworks that were transferred to other museums as part of the Nazis’ “degenerate art” campaign and have now been returned on a temporary basis specifically for this exhibition.

Alongside Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth (1858–1925) is considered one of the most prominent representatives of the German Impressionist movement. Home to more than 20 of the artist’s oil paintings, some of them large-format, the Nationalgalerie boasts an extensive and significant collection of Corinth’s works.

However, the routes by which these objects found their way into the Nationalgalerie’s collection are frequently characterised by their loss and in some cases their return: a selection of the paintings in question were seized in 1937 as “degenerate” artworks, before being unexpectedly returned in 1939, while others were only able to be reacquired much later; some were not seized, whereas others were sold during that era and are now held in various locations in Germany and abroad.

In an effort to compensate for these losses, additional paintings by Corinth and his wife Charlotte Berend-Corinth (1880–1967) were acquired by both the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR after 1945. Born in East Prussia, Corinth relocated from Munich to Berlin in 1901. Following a stroke in 1911, his brushwork became considerably more expressive. When he died of pneumonia on 17 July 1925, he was on his way to Am

 

Lovis Corinth

Frau mit Rosenhut, 1912

Öl auf Leinwand, 60 x 50 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie /

Fotograf: Reinhard Saczewski

Lovis Corinth

Das Trojanische Pferd, 1924

Öl auf Leinwand, 105 x 135 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie /

Fotograf: André van Linn

Charlotte Behrend-Corinth
Chess player in Lovis Corinth's sickroom in Amsterdam 1925, 1925
Oil on canvas, 43.1 x 66.2 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie 
Photographer: André van Linn

Lovis Corinth
Portrait of Charlotte Berend-Corinth, c. 1904
Charcoal on yellow-greenish paper, 47.2 x 31 cm 
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Dietmar Katz

Lovis Corinth
The Standard Bearer, 1919/20
Drypoint, proof, 32 x 24.5 cm (print)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Dietmar Katz

Lovis Corinth
Self-portrait at the window, 1922
Black lithographic crayon on paper, 34.5 x 25.5 cm 
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Jörg P. Anders

Lovis Corinth
Walchensee landscape, 1925
Watercolour, 50.4 x 67.7 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Jörg P. Anders

Lovis Corinth

Frau mit Rosenhut, 1912

Öl auf Leinwand, 60 x 50 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie /

Fotograf: Reinhard Saczewski

Lovis Corinth

Das Trojanische Pferd, 1924

Öl auf Leinwand, 105 x 135 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie /

Fotograf: André van Linn

Charlotte Behrend-Corinth
Chess player in Lovis Corinth's sickroom in Amsterdam 1925, 1925
Oil on canvas, 43.1 x 66.2 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie 
Photographer: André van Linn

Lovis Corinth
Portrait of Charlotte Berend-Corinth, c. 1904
Charcoal on yellow-greenish paper, 47.2 x 31 cm 
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Dietmar Katz

Lovis Corinth
The Standard Bearer, 1919/20
Drypoint, proof, 32 x 24.5 cm (print)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Dietmar Katz

Lovis Corinth
Self-portrait at the window, 1922
Black lithographic crayon on paper, 34.5 x 25.5 cm 
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Jörg P. Anders

Lovis Corinth
Walchensee landscape, 1925
Watercolour, 50.4 x 67.7 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Jörg P. Anders

Lovis Corinth

Selbstbildnis vor der Staffelei, 1919

Öl auf Leinwand, 126 x 105,8 cm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / 1976 erworben durch das Land Berlin

Fotograf: Jörg P. Anders

Charlotte Behrend-Corinth
Portrait of the architect Hans Poelzig, 1926
Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie 
Photographer: André van Linn

Charlotte Berend-Corinth
Wilhelmine Corinth reading, around 1920
Pencil on paper, 28.2 x 37.1 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Dietmar Katz

Lovis Corinth
The Trojan Horse (study for the painting in the Nationalgalerie), 1924
Black chalk on brownish paper, 45.5 x 60.5 cm 
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 
Photographer: Dietmar Katz

Lovis Corinth 
Inn Valley landscape, 1910
Oil on canvas, 75 x 99 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie 
Photographer: Jörg P. Anders

Lovis Corinth
The Blinded Samson, 1912
Oil on canvas, 130 x 105 cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie
Photographer: Andres Kilger