Petruschki's Journey Into The Blue - Chapter 3 Part 1 - A journey in 30 blue pictures
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This is a picture from Georgia O'Keeffe Series I, No.8, 1919 It hangs in the permanent collection of the Lenbachhaus in Munich
In december 2019 we went on a journey by bus and train through Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland. The aim was the exhibition Protest! by Derek Jarman in Dublin, there was so much to see on the way there. In the end we had visited 21 exhibitions and had also discovered a few other interesting stories. Here is the first part of the sequence of this journey.
We start this wonderful journey in 30 pictures. Let's go to Paris to visit Hans Hartung, El Greco, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bacon and the permanent exhibition of the Centre Pompidou. Then on to Munich, where the works by Jawlensky and Werefkin can be seen in a joint exhibition. There we also visit the permanent exhibition in the Lenbach House. Then we see the large Van Dyck exhibition and the permanent exhibition in the Alte Pinakothek, where we come to ecstase with Rubens. On to Mannheim to Matisse. Then to Frankfurt to Van Gogh and the permanent exhibition in the Städel Museum. Let me introduce you to Plautilla Nelli, a breathtaking Renaissance painter. At the end of this part comes the exhibition "Great Realism & Great Abstraction" drawings by Max Beckmann to Gerhard Richter.
You will find information about past and upcoming exhibitions in Europe or the USA, which sadly we probably won’t be able to experience in person. Because of the pandemic or because of money. Who know´s when we will overcome the pandamic and we can´t be sure that the alien invasion won´t follow. The good thing is that the museums almost always have detailed pages about past and future exhibitions with films, images, comments, blogs and even virtual visits. There you can roam around and get inspired.
First Paris…from Barcelona with train
Hans Hartung, T 1961 - H 4
Hans Hartung Exhibition -La fabrique du geste- October 11, 2019 - March 1, 2020
Musée d’Art Moderne
Here I met … the child who banished the lightning. It is said that Hartung started painting and especially devoted himself to abstract painting at a young age, because he had a very impactful experience as a child: he was terribly afraid of thunderstorms and it probably didn't go down well to be a scaredy-cat. In order to dispel the fear, he painted the lightning bolts as fast as he could. He believed that then they could no longer be dangerous to him. Such a wonderful story.
«I want to stay free. Mind, thought, action. I won't let myself be locked up, not by others, not by myself. ” Hans Hartung
There are wonderful quotes from Hartung, about art, childhood and the universe. I'm looking forward to the Hartung chapter, or rather maybe several of them.
More of his works and those of his wife Anna-Eva Bergmann you can find at the Hartung Bergmann Foundation in Antibes.
El Greco, The Assumption of the Virgen
El Greco
The Assumption of the Virgen - Maria Himmelfahrt detail
Greco Grand Palais October 16, 2019 - February 10, 2020
At Greco I hear the fabrics rustle and see them shimmer and sparkle as they move. I also see the architecture he built out of them to guide your eye.
Permanent exhibition:
There is a virtual visit possible
A temporary exhibition:
El Greco en Illescas Museo Nacional del Prado until 02/28/21
5 pictures from the church Santuario de Nuestra Señora de La Caridad de Illescas in Toledo
Henri Toulouse Lautrec, Seule 1896
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec
Seule / Alone 1896
Résolument Moderne - Resolutely modern Grand Palais October 9, 2019 - January 27, 2020
Circus, beautiful horse riders, dance halls, the nightlife, the whores, Toulouse-Lautrec drew and painted in whirling movements or naked, vulnerable tiredness in silent exhaustion. He himself died as a young man from the swirling nightlife, from the despair over his broken body, from the exhaustion of living again and again in defiance of it all.
Further exhibitions:
Toulouse-Lautrec and the Celebrity Culture of Paris
Art Institute Chicago until January 31, 2021
Toulouse-Lautrec & the Belle Époque
Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida, USA February 13, 2021 - May 23, 2021
La Bohème Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the masters of Montmartre
Moritzburg Art Museum Halle / Saale June 6, 2021 - August 22, 2021
Permanent exhibitions at the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi, France
Francis Bacon, Sand Dune, 1983
Francis Bacon, Sand Dune 1983
Bacon En toutes lettres Center Pompidou September 11, 2019 - January 20, 2020
A sand dune - like a man's torso, suffering or devoted, battered or excited….
The exhibition is organized around 6 books that were important to Bacon and that inspired him. There are books by Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Michael Leiris, Joseph Conrad and Eliot. The respective books from Bacon's library can be seen in a showcase in closed, darkened rooms. You can listen to excerpts from these books in English and French, read by famous actors. Bacon's large-format works are grouped around the cubic book rooms in the vastness of the white hall. There is a strange contrast, the openness and brightness of the exhibition and the intimate darkness, the quiet voices in the book rooms. It is like being prepared to look at the images in the correct state of sensitivity. As if one were made finer and more attentive by the book rooms.
There is a pirate who introduced me to Bacon. It's a shame that I couldn't see the exhibition with her.
Further exhibitions:
Francis Bacon: The Late Paintings until August 2020
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston
You can still see the exhibited pictures in a slideshow
Passion - Leidenschaft October 9, 2020 - February 14, 2021
LWL Museum for Art and Culture, Münster
Francis Bacon: Man and Beast indefinitely postponed.
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Mikhail F. Larionov, L´automne, 1912
Mikhail F. Larionov L´automne, 1912 stands for the works of art that we are showing from the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou.
There is a short hymn to autumn on the painting: "The happy autumn, which sparkles like gold with its ripe grapes and exhilarating wine."
Neoprimitivism. A renewal movement of Russian culture that drew from folk art. In music, Igor Stravinsky was a representative.
Mikhail Fyodorowitsch Larionow was a Russian painter who belonged to the Russian avant-garde. He is considered to be the founder of rayonism, the search for a method to capture the light on the canvas. Most of his life he worked and lived with the painter and set designer Natalija Sergejewna Goncharova.
Marianne von Werefkin Selbstbildnis ca. 1910
We take the night bus through the snowy night from Paris to Munich. We see the exhibition in the Lenbachhaus.
Lebensmenschen Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin Lenbachhaus 22.10. 2019 – 16.2. 2020
Marianne von Werefkin Selfportrait ca. 1910
Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941) and Marianne von Werefkin (1860-1938) are one of the pioneering artist couples of the avant-garde. In 1909 they founded the “New Munich Artist's Association” (Neue Künstlervereinigung München) from which the “The Blue Rider” (Der Blaue Reiter) emerged. Werefkin acted as the pioneer, Jawlensky as the initiator in painting. Each for themselves and together as a couple, they significantly influenced and advanced art at the beginning of the 20th century.
Alexej von Jawlensky Heilandsgesicht: Erwartung 1917
Alexej von Jawlensky Heilandsgesicht: Erwartung 1917
“This acquaintance should change my life. I became her friend, of this clever, ingeniously gifted woman. "
Alexej von Jawlensky in his memoirs of his first meeting with Marianne von Werefkin, 1892
Weitere Ausstellung:
Lebensmenschen Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin Museum Wiesbaden
Virtual tour through the exhibition possible, also you can find there films, pictures, biographies, certificates
Museo Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Ascona
20. September 2020 - 10. Januar 2021
Georgia O´Keeffe, Series I, NO.8, 1919
Walk around in the permanent collection of the Lenbach House and you will be amazed. And then there hangs a picture of her ... Georgia O'Keeffe ... Highly erotic and all to herself, a world of its own that had nothing to do with the usual sex stuff and sex consumerism thing. A dream comes true, a dream that gets under the skin, under the tongue and between the legs.
An exhibition of her pictures is planed really soon and maybe by then the virus will be under control and you can travel to Madrid.
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
April 20 - August 8, 2021
Rudolf Schlichter Helene Weigel 1928
Helene Weigel, painted by Rudolf Schlichter. She is 28 years old. Berthold Brecht has known her for 5 years. By then they already have a son together. Her expression seems tired, serene, downright resigned. The future seems exhausting, both politically and perhaps privately. It looks like a lot of fighting. But there she is in a blue dress, which may be a smock, or a theatrical costume. The brilliance of this colour transcends her to another level, where everything can be negotiated differently. Like in the theater.
Copy after Anthonie van Dyck Königin Henrietta Maria von England um 1636/
Copy after Anthonie van Dyck Queen Henrietta Maria of England around 1636/37
Van Dyck Alte Pinakothek, Munich
October 25, 2019 - February 2, 2020 on the museum website you can still find information, blogs and films about the exhibition.
Another woman in a blue dress. 300 years earlier. Van Dyck often painted Henrietta Maria, Queen of England. As a Catholic, she was an unpopular English queen. Her husband didn't care much for her at first either. Over time, however, they got closer and it was rumored that the king had started to fall in love with the queen. She was in her late twenties when the picture was painted. Her look surprises me, between a penetrating directness and downright mocking restraint. In the van Dyck exhibition there were always looks that cast a spell on me. More on that later. Then I will also tell you about how the young van Dyck, at the suggestion of his teacher Peter Paul Rubens, visits the elderly painter Sofonisba Anguissola, has long conversations with her about painting and portrays her. With his diary he gave an incredible testimony about this incredible female painter. There is a separate chapter devoted to Sofonisba Anguissola.
Master of the Life of the Virgin (Meister des Marienlebens), The Annunciation, Detail around 1470/1480
Alte Pinakothek permanent collection
Meister des Marienlebens, The Annunciation, Detail, probably 1470/1480
Little blue Angels, are lively commenting on how the Archangel Gabriel, the chief of the cherubim and seraphim, the angelus interpres, copes with his task to announce to Mary that she is six months pregnant.
Plautille Nelli, The last supper 1560
This is an excerpt from Plautilla Nelli's Last Supper. The work has the dimensions of 2 x 7 meters. That is extraordinary for a female painter during that period. The women were preferred to paint miniatures back then. Another exciting detour. There were no exhibitions by this female Renaissance artist or her female contemporaries on our journey nor were they on our radar. But while exploring Greco I came across the many more or less forgotten female painters of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The nun Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) was also forgotten until recently. She was self-taught and learned by copying other painters. She later taught other nuns and her monastery became a kind of feminist painting manufactur. Her pictures were very popular and they earned a lot of money.
August Macke Sitzender, Nude with pillows, 1911
August Macke Sitting Nude with Cushions, 1911
With train we go from Munich to Mannheim to the exhibition Inspiration Matisse, Kunsthalle Mannheim September 27, 2019 - January 19, 2020
Here is a picture by August Macke from the exhibition “Inspiration Matisse”. Unfortunately, you were not allowed to take pictures. As the title suggests, this exhibition was about whom and how much Matisse inspired.
Matisse was also called the “artist for artists”. He had a lasting influence on the art of the 20th century and, alongside Picasso, is the most important representative of classical modernism. In addition to Matisse, the Mannheim exhibition featured central works by André Derain, Georges Braque, Charles Camoin, Kees van Dongen, Raoul Dufy, Henri Manguin and Albert Marquet as well as by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alexej von Jawlensky, August Macke, Gabriele Münter and Max Pechstein.
Further exhibition:
October 21, 2020 to February 22, 2021, Center George Pompidou, Paris
Henri Matisse Le reve, Mai 1935
This painting of Matisse “The dream” was not in the “Inspiration Matisse” exhibition in Mannheim, but in the permanent collection of the Center George Pompidou. A woman, the blue. How I love it.
Matisse's colors are unique in their liveliness and luminosity. Picasso said: … the way Matisse uses color. If you find three tones in Matisse's work that are close together - say a green, a purple, and a turquoise - then their connection conjures up another color, which one could call the color. This is called the language of colors. [...] The fact that there is a certain red spot on one of my pictures is not the essence of the picture. The picture was painted independently. You could take away the red and the picture would still be there. But with Matisse it is inconceivable that one can suppress a spot of red [...] without the image collapsing immediately. ”
Source: Pablo Picasso: Über Kunst, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1988, pp. 59–61.
Vincent van Gogh, First Steps (nach Millet), 1890
In Frankfurt we arrive from Mannheim with bus.
Making Van Gogh, Städel Museum October 23, 2019 - February 16, 2020
Vincent van Gogh, First Steps (after Millet), 1890
Vincent van Gogh created this picture in the last year of his life. His brother Theo with his wife Johanna were expecting a child and Van Gogh was very happy for them. In the autumn and winter of 1889/90 in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted a total of 20 pictures based on Millet's models, including -The First Steps-. What appealed to him was the transfer of a small, black and white reproduction into a large, colored painting.
“ That is not just a mere copying. It is more like translating into another language - like translating the light and dark effect of black and white into the language of color."
This picture shows a hopeful beginning, the first steps of the child, the blossoming trees, the still small plants in the garden. It is a protected beginning.
Next exhibitions:
Through Vincent's Eyes: Van Gogh and the Sources of His Art 11.10.2020–1.3.2021 The Columbia Museum of ArtColumbia, United States of America
Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin. Emil Bührle Collection / Leopold Museum
Late February-late July 2021
Permanent exhibitions of his works in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Ernst Wilhelm Ney My 13 (Mykonos) 1964
„Great Realism & Great Abstraction -Drawings from Max Beckmann to Gerhard Richter”
November 13, 2019 - February 16, 2020
An extraordinarily dense and diverse exhibition. “Great realism and great abstraction” - between these two opposits move the approximately 1,800 German drawings from the 20th century in the Städel Museum's graphic collection. A selection of 100 drawings was shown in this exhibition.
Ernst Wilhelm Ney My 13 (Mykonos) 1964. I can't really say why I was so enchanted by this drawing. For me it has depth, seriousness and happiness. There are the colors of the southern sky and the ocher of the earth and sand.
The next part continues with pictures by Meret Oppenheim, Lee Krassner, Kippenberger, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Freud, Jarman and others. Also you will see something about the great female painter Sofonisba Anguissola.
