16.12.2022
Kupferstichkabinett
The Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor are jointly celebrating Max Liebermann on the 175th anniversary of this great artist’s birth. Under the title Liebermann zeichnet (Liebermann Draws), on view from 16 December 2022 to 5 March 2023, around 90 works are presented for the first time in an exhibition dedicated solely to Max Liebermann’s draftsmanship. Drawings that the artist made on site and those once preserved in his home can be experienced at the Liebermann family’s reconstructed city mansion adjacent to Brandenburg Gate.
Max Liebermann (1847‒1935) is well-known today to many art lovers for his paintings. However, he was able to explore the realm painting had to offer mainly through his drawings, which are the origins of his famous works. The artist’s studies on paper ‒ made in pencil, charcoal or chalk ‒ allow direct encounters with Liebermann while he worked. They provide profound insights into the creation of his art.
The exhibition shows drawings from every period of Liebermann’s oeuvre: from his precise contour drawings to painterly landscapes, up to and including abstractions found in his later virtuoso works. Liebermann transformed more than just his drawing style; he continually reinvented himself through his choice of motifs: from realist portraits of Dutch farmers to depictions of modern, middle-class leisure pursuits captured in an Impressionist elegance.