While the Museum Berggruen is closed for major renovations, and a large section of the collection is on tour, the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg has made museum space available on it’s first upper level to show a small but representative selection of Berggruen works. In addition to Alberto Giacometti’s Katze (Cat, 1951), which found its place inside the Stüler building entrance, works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne now hang on the walls around Giacometti’s Große stehende Frau III (Large Standing Woman III, 1960).

Early Contact with the Surrealists

Three of these artists – Giacometti, Picasso and Klee – were in contact with the Surrealists, who are now the main emphasis of the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg. In works such as Klee’s Frau R. auf Reisen im Süden (Frau R. Travelling in the South, 1924) and Picasso’s Bildnis Nusch (Portrait of Nusch, 1937), the eyes ‒ which the Surrealists paid special attention to like hardly another part of the body ‒ are the focus of the images.

Portraits of Women

Another small group of works takes portraits of women as its subject: Cézanne’s Junges Mädchen mit offenem Haar (Young Girl with Loose Hair, 1873‒74), Picasso’s Frau in einem Sessel (Woman in an Armchair, 1939), Klee’s Rotes Mädchen mit gelbem Topfhut (Red Girl with Yellow Pot Hat, 1919) and Matisse’s portrait of Lorette (1917).

A special exhibition by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin