LENBACHHAUS

Description

Essentials about the Lenbachhaus in brief

The Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Municipal Gallery in the Lenbachhaus) is one of Munich’s most important art museums. Housed in the beautiful Lenbach Palace of Munich painter Franz von Lenbach, the museum is most famous for the world’s largest art collection of the “Blauer Reiter” group around the painters Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee August Macke, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter. However, the Municipal Gallery, which also includes the Kunstbau in the Königsplatz subway station, also shows works from a wide variety of art movements from the 19th and 20th centuries and current temporary exhibitions.

The history and architecure of the Lenbachhaus

The place where the painter Franz von Lenbach had his villa built was chosen by him quite deliberately. Directly opposite the classicist Königsplatz with its Propylaea and the Glyptothek, he created a residence for himself that he wanted to make a center of art in Munich. “I intend to build myself a palace that will eclipse anything that has gone before; the powerful centers of great European art are to be linked there with the present,” Lenbach wrote in a letter in 1885. And he was indeed to realize his dream.

The villa, which he designed together with the architect Gabriel von Seidl, had an L-shaped ground plan with a main building and a studio building. A garden divided by fountains was laid out in front of the two buildings. The building and garden were broadly modeled on the Italian Renaissance, with many decorative elements based on antique designs. The rich interior decoration included antique sculptures, medieval paintings, tapestries and carpets, as well as copies of antique works of art.

After the death of Franz von Lenbach in 1904, his widow sold the house to the city of Munich in 1924. She also donated to the city a large number of works of art by Lenbach himself and other artists from the house’s inventory. These paintings formed the basis for a new municipal gallery.

A year after the purchase of the villa, the city provided a sum of money for the purchase of more works of art. The city had another wing of the building built opposite the studio wing. The architect Grässel opted for a restrained historicizing formal language, adapted to the style of the other wings of the building. The new Lenbachhaus was opened to the public in 1929.

In the last years of the war, 1944/1945, large parts of the house were destroyed in bombing raids, but were rebuilt after the war. On February 19, 1957, on her 80th birthday, Gabriele Münter donated a large part of the life’s work of her partner Wassily Kandinsky to the city of Munich. The donation included more than 90 oil paintings, over 330 watercolors and drawings, sketchbooks, reverse paintings on glass, as well as most of Kandinsky’s prints. In addition, there were 25 paintings, many drawings and prints by Münter herself, and a collection of photographs of the artist couple and their friends. Furthermore, the donation included many works by artist friends such as Alexej von Jawlensky, Franz Marc, August Macke and Marianne von Werefkin. In one fell swoop, the house thus became a museum of world renown.

Further important paintings by Macke, Jawlensky, Marc and Jean-Bloé Niestlé came into the gallery’s possession in 1965 through the Bernhard Koehler Foundation. In the following years, further works by the main representatives of the Blaue Reiter and classical modernism were purchased. In the years 1969 to 1972, an extension building was created in order to be able to present the strongly growing collection appropriately.

In 1994, the possibilities of the Gallery in the Lenbachhaus were considerably expanded with the opening of the Kunstbau. The spacious exhibition area is located in a previously unused part of the mezzanine floor of the Königsplatz subway station very close to the Lenbachhaus and is used for large temporary exhibitions of mostly modern or recent art. In 2009, a cube-shaped extension by British architects Foster + Partners was added to the Lenbachhaus, housing the museum’s new reception area.

The collection of the Lenbachhaus

The Lenbachhaus owes its worldwide fame to the unique collection of works by the group Der Blaue Reiter, with numerous paintings by Alexej Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc, August Macke, Marianne von Werefkin and Paul Klee. In addition, the New Objectivity can also be seen with works by Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter and other artists. Since 1979, the Lenbachhaus has also been purchasing contemporary art that is only indirectly connected to Munich. Central pieces are works by Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter.

The Lenbachhaus owns about 30,000 works of art. The museum uses part of the premises for changing exhibitions. Since the 1970s, the museum’s exhibitions have presented major trends and artists of the international contemporary art scene.