13.03.2008 to 01.06.2008
Matthias Grünewald is one of the most important artists of the German Renaissance next to Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach. One of his best-known works is the monumental Isenheim altar at the Musée d'Unterlinden in Colmar. The expressive protagonists of this depiction of the Passion, gripped by pain and empathy, have deeply influenced a whole generation of artists from Paul Klee and Max Beckmann to Otto Dix. This exhibition at the Kupferstichkabinett - Museum of Prints and Drawings illustrates that the great painter was also a sophisticated draftsman.
Thanks to generous loans, it is for the first time possible to present the entire oeuvre of Grünewald drawings. On view side by side, they reveal the painter as an important protagonist of a radically new art of drawing. Here, a mature pictorial idea has been fully developed with great attention to detail and dramatic lighting, there, a freshly imagined form has tentatively been given shape. In each of these varied drawings, however, the artist concentrates on man, on human perceptions and emotions.
