Please note the changed opening hours from 16 April 2024. More

Heaven and Earth
Naive art from Poland: the Orth' Collection

03.12.2004 to 03.04.2005

Museum Europäischer Kulturen
Museum Europäischer Kulturen

During the Christmas season the Museum of European Cultures is exhibiting selected works of religious and profane art from Poland. Wooden sculptures and paintings are on display, which the married couple Christina and Hans Joachim Orth collected between1960 and1980.

The Orth collection, consisting of more than 300 works of 65 polish artists, was given to the Museum of European Cultures as a permanent loan by the Nuremberg Museums.

This salient exhibition of the naive arts, presented in Berlin for the first time, offers unique insights into the everyday life, human experience and the religious sensibility of Poland.

Of particular interest are the portraits of such prominent individuals as Fréderick Chopin and Nickolaus Kopernikus. There are also insightful historic scenes, such as those reflecting the terrible and incomprehensible experience of the Second World War. Many motifs evoke the experience of the great Jewish community which lived in Poland before the War.