Museum Barberini Potsdam-Exhibitions 2023

26. January 2023

Museum Barberini Potsdam – New acquisitions 2022 and exhibitions 2023, you should not miss – Experience some of the most beautiful sunrises in art history!

he new year again promises exciting exhibitionsin unusual contexts: from the radiance of the sun to the paintings of Edvard Munch with his dramatic depictions of nature, you will be thoroughly entertained in Potsdam.

“The Sun. Source of Light in Art” (February 25, 2023 – June 11, 2023)

“Impression, Sunrise” from 1872 – that’s the painting by Claude Monet, which gave its name to the art movement “Impressionism”… It shows the view of Monet on November 13, 1872 from his hotel room in Le Havre, a harbor view in the fog with the rising sun. This image led art critic Louis Leroy to use the word Impressionism in his article, the word that would later stand as a painting style for Claude Monet and a host of painters who looked at the world with this particular gaze, capturing the mood of a moment.

In collaboration with the Musée Marmottan Monet, the Museum Barberini’s exhibition, which begins in February, will focus on the sun. About 80 works of art, beginning in antiquity and extending to the present, show the sun as a sign of divine powers, as a source of strength in mythological tales, or to capture a special atmosphere in landscapes. Paintings, sculptures, graphics, manuscripts and books… they all show the sun – it became the focus of European art in countless works. Peter Paul Rubens, William Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Sonia Delaunay, Albrecht Dürer, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, André Derain, Otto Dix, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder…the list is seemingly endless and will feature some of the most beautiful sunrises in art history.

Clouds and Light. Impressionism in Holland (July 8 – October 22, 2023)

As the beginnings of landscape painting can be found in Holland and the painting was perfected over the centuries, new influences came in the 19th century through Impressionist painting and Pointilism from France. The exhibition “Clouds and Light” will show more than 100 works by 40 artists, including paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Piet Mondrian.

Munch. Lifescape (November 18, 2023 – April 01, 2024)

This first exhibition on Edvard Munch’s landscape paintings was created in cooperation with renowned museums. Nature itself and the recurring cycle of the seasons play a main role as well as nature as a mirror of Edvard Munch’s mental disruption.

With all these special exhibitions the Museum Barberini remains exciting in 2023, too.

New Acquisitions of Foundation Hasso Plattner

But a visit to the museum is not only worthwhile for the special exhibitions. The museum shows the largest number of paintings by Monet outside France and is a must for all fans of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.

Eight new works of art were purchased for the collection in 2022, including a still life by Pierre Bonnard or the Venice painting “Rio San Trovaso” by Henri-Edmond Cross from 1903/04. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was still part of a German private collection and was shown in the exhibition of the Cologne Sonderbund in 1912 – now it will be on display in the future at the room “Coasts of Europe”, where it will be shown together with Venice paintings by Claude Monet and other pointilist works by Henri-Edmond Cross.

The painting “The Seine at the Pont Saint-Michel” is the first work by the Neo-Impressionist Maximilien Luce to be acquired by the Hasso Plattner Foundation. It is one of four paintings of this Parisian bridge that were created at the same time around 1900. In the future, it will be on shown together with other Paris paintings of Pissarro and Caillebotte.