Please note: The Gemäldegalerie as well as the exhibition Cracked Up and Burnt Down: Fireworks Across Five Centuries of the Kunstbibliothek at the Kulturforum will remain closed due to an event on Thursday, 23 January 2025. We ask for your understanding.
04.08.2006 to 05.11.2006
An exhibition of the Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, and the Gemäldegalerie - Old Master Paintings, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
On the occasion of the 400th birthday of Rembrandt, the Gemäldegalerie - Old Master Paintings presents the wide spectrum of Rembrandt's painted œuvre: a top-class selection of international loans gives a spectacular impression of the skills of the great artist. The exhibition - with around 70 exhibits surely the largest Rembrandt show of the jubilee year - takes into account the focal points of the latest research which have concentrated on the period after the creation of The Night Watch. In 1642, Rembrandt had reached the peak of his fame as a portrait and history painter, but the eventful year also marked a turning point in his personal life as well as his artistic development. His wife Saskia died, leaving Rembrandt with their one-year-old son, Titus. The following years not only brought a number of private blows and financial misfortunes but also seem to have plunged the artist into a creative "crisis": for ten years, he painted very few pictures.
Nevertheless, Rembrandt remained active as a teacher. The exhibition illustrates this by creating a dialogue between the prototype pictures which Rembrandt placed at his pupils' and workshop assistants' disposal and the "satellite" copies they produced after his works. This comparison is acutely relevant to today's research on questions of the reception of Rembrandt among his contemporaries and of the authenticity of the Rembrandt œuvre.
Rembrandt's entire work is the result of a continuous, restless artistic search. The most recent findings of the Rembrandt Research Project shed a new light on the important painter as a creative genius and the driving force behind a most prolific workshop. The exhibition offers the visitor a peek into the "Rembrandt laboratory", a place which seethed with creative energy under the master's inciting and inspiring supervision.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive, beautifully illustrated catalogue with essays by internationally renowned experts and a public conference which will take place in November 2006. At the same time, the Kupferstichkabinett - Museum of Prints and Drawings will show the exhibitions "Rembrandt. Ein Virtuose der Druckgraphik" ("Rembrandt. A Virtuoso of Prints") and "Rembrandt. Der Zeichner" ("Rembrandt. The Draftsman"), which present the highlights of the world-renowned Berlin collection of Rembrandt drawings and prints.
Venue: Sonderausstellungshallen Kulturforum
Organizer
