Artistic views of Dresden - across the 20th century
On the second floor of the Landhaus, the Städtische Galerie presents artistic views of the city of Dresden throughout the 20th century - with paintings from Gotthardt Kuehl to Siegfried Klotz.
The opinion about a city, indeed the love for it, is a matter of opinion. The views of a city and the perspectives on a city are as diverse as its inhabitants. What's more, a city is never static, neither as an architectural nor as a social structure: its appearance and atmosphere are constantly changing.
And so Dresden, too, is still undergoing constant transformation today. A look at the past 20th century makes the dynamics of these changes tangible. On the one hand, prosperity and prosperity and on the other, destruction and stagnation - growth and periods of prosperity are interrupted or even ended by wars and destruction, followed by periods of reconstruction and reorganisation. And the image of the city is always changing.
Otto Richter, archivist, librarian and historian, initiated the civic and municipal collections in 1891. To this day, one of the most important themes is the documentation of the city's transformation, the documentation of changes in the cityscape. Otto Richter's idea and vision was that views of the city by Dresden's best visual artists should also be used for this task. His credo was that the image of the city should be documented by the contemporary artists of the time.
In this way, an extensive topographical collection was created. The range of motifs extends from the now world-famous views of Brühl's Terrace with the towers of the Catholic Court Church, the castle tower and the dome of the Frauenkirche, to remote corners of Dresden known only to the initiated connoisseurs. A central artistic subject is, of course, the city on the river with its bridges and the unique Elbe meadows right into the city centre.
On the second floor of the Landhaus, the Städtische Galerie Dresden is now showing an impressive selection of these artistic views of the city of Dresden throughout the 20th century - with paintings by artists ranging from Gotthardt Kuehl to Siegfried Klotz.
It is not only from the famous "painter's corner" on Brühl's Terrace that artists since Bernardo Bellotto have repeatedly sought out original views of the city of Dresden and captured them on canvas. The motifs of the medium to large-format paintings also include the suburbs, individual streets and the many lively squares.
Due to its conceptual orientation, the Städtische Galerie's collection contains numerous such works by artists both well-known and unknown today. On the basis of a selection of 57 paintings, we present interesting retrospectives of the cityscape before 1945 in pictures on the one hand, and on the other hand, the pictures of the reconstruction of the 1950s and 1960s are to be rediscovered. And there are individually perceived motifs of unspectacular places in the urban fabric.
The Elbe as the city's lifeline and its bridges through the ages play an important role here. And time and again, the cityscapes also become symbolic interpretations of the respective zeitgeist.
In addition, the exhibition provides an exciting overview of the development of painting from the realism of the late 19th century through impressionist, expressionist, neo-objective and socialist-realist tendencies to the stylistic openness of the 1990s.
Artists
Werner Bielohlawek | Dyrck Bondzin | Fritz Beckert | Rudolf Bergander | Heinz Drache | Ernst Richard Dietze | Siegfried Donndorf | Ernst Fechter | Michael Freudenberg | Hubertus Giebe | Georg Griebel | Alfred Hesse | Erich Helbig | Peter Herrmann | Achim Heim | Ernst Hassebrauk | Hermann Kohlmann | Bernhard Kretzschmar | Hans Körnig | Karl Kröner | Siegfried Klotz | Johannes Kühl | Gotthardt Kuehl | Horst Leifer | Margarethe Macholz | Hans Mroczinski | Richard Mauff | Siegfried Mackowsky | Richard Miller | Paul Michaelis | Ernst Günther Neumann | Georg Oehme | Stefan Plenkers | Paul Wilhelm | Paul Ricken | Rudolf Reimer | Hans Schirmer | Eva Schulze-Knabe | Kurt Schuster | Albert Schumann | Alice Sommer | Fritz Stotz | Ernst Oskar Simonson-Castelli | Jewgenij Timofejewitsch Subechin | Günther Torges | Christoph Wetzel | Albert Wigand | Horst Weber | Paul Wilhelm | Rainer Zille
Supported by
Freundeskreis Städtische Galerie Dresden -- Atelierbegegnungen e. V.