4 JUN until 5 JUL 2025

With selected works by the sculptor Bernhard Hoetger – and in parallel to the exhibition Camille Claudel – Bernhard Hoetger at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin – we put a focus on the artist’s early sculptural work executed while he was living in Paris.

Bernhard Hoetger (1874–1949) travels to the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris as a master student of the Art Academy Düsseldorf. Impressed by the pavilion showing Rodin’s works, he spontaneously decides to stay in Paris. In 1901 Julius Meier-Graefe and Samuel Bing signed him for their famous gallery La Maison Moderne; numerous “statuettesdécoratives” influenced by Art Nouveau are made. In 1903, Eugène Blot became his publisher and art dealer. Hoetger exhibited at the legendary Salon d’Automne for several years and got to know Maillol – both are considered the most important contemporary sculptors in the aftermath of Rodin; thus Hugo von Tschudi planned as early as 1901 to acquire works by Hoetger for the Berlin National Gallery.

Inspired by the dancer LoïeFuller, who presented a very special performance to the Parisian audience around 1900 wearing a wide swinging gown and using electric lighting effects, Hoetger created the important Art Nouveau sculptures “LoïeFuller” and “La Tempête” in 1901, both placing the dynamics of movement at the centre.

Bernhard Hoetger met Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) in Paris in 1906 and was immediately convinced of her extraordinary talent. He is one of the first collectors to acquire her paintings. Based on his design, the Paula Becker-Modersohn-House opened in 1927 at BöttcherstraßeBremen – being the first museum worldwide dedicated to a female artist. Paula Modersohn-Becker is represented in our exhibition with an exquisite selection of Worpswede composition sketches, illustrating how she elaborated her pictorial subjects and compositions using a drawing pencil.

2 MAY until 5 JUL 2025
Opening – 2 MAY 2025, 6-9 pm

On the occasion of Gallery Weekend 2025, we put a focus on the artists Birgitt Bolsman, Almut Heise and Rissa, all three consciously placing representationalism at the centre of their work – thus belonging to the movement that emerged in the early 1960s and which marks a turning away from Abstraction and Art Informel. Drawing as a medium is of particular importance in clarifying their own artistic position.

Birgitt Bolsmann (1944–2000) already tried her hand at a reality orientated painting while studying in Hamburg. She draws her subjects largely from fashion photography and striking advertising, which she critically examines in terms of the image of women that they propagate. In her painting she fixes her subjects with great clarity using a cool colour scheme. The selection of works on show demonstrates that Bolsman was an outstanding draughtswoman. From 1973 on, she created meticulously executed pencil drawings of portraits and masks as well as fashion and garment studies in dense, visually finely graded grey shades.

With similar precision Almut Heise (*1944), who studied in Hamburg and London, constructs her compositions. Since the mid-1960s, she created an extensive body of drawings and works on paper in colour, concentrating on interiors and portraits, in the beginning preparing paintings, but later on as more autonomous works. Heise does not reproduce reality. Being a sharp observer, she stylised her subjects which seem to be detached from space and time. Every fold, every wallpaper pattern and every gesture is tried out until the “longed-for rooms” have emerged.

Rissa’s (*1938) artistic conception is based on the idea of creating a future-orientated, object-related painting both in terms of content and form. Defined at the end of her studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1964, her approach relies on the juxtaposition of small scale structures of form and colour from the outlines of which the pictorial objects emerge.

The medium of drawing accompanies Rissa’s working process for a canvas painting; nevertheless, there are autonomous work series in which she varies pictorial ideas in a large scale.