The art patron Hartwig Garnerus lives up to his reputation and donates his collection of works from the late Expressionist period to the New Objectivity to the Bavarian State Painting Collections. Garnerus announced this on the occasion of the presentation of the exhibition “Beautiful and Vulnerable. Human Images from the Garnerus Collection” in the Pinakothek der Moderne. The bundle includes a good 100 works by, among others, Hermann Blumenthal, Lovis Corinth, Otto Freundlich, Karl Hofer, Helmut Kolle, Carl Lohse, Marg Moll, Walther Ophey, Emy Roeder and Joseph Scharl.
The art historian, who will soon be 80 years old, was the managing director of the Theo Wormland Foundation for many years. The Pinakothek der Moderne foundation, co-founded by Garnerus in 1994, made the private start-up financing of ten percent of the construction sum for the museum, which was a condition of the Bavarian state government at the time, possible in the first place. The Theo Wormland Foundation made a decisive contribution to the construction of the museum with more than three million Deutschmarks. Thanks to Garnerus’ mediation, the textile entrepreneur Theo Wormland donated his surrealism collection with outstanding works from Salvador Dalí to Max Ernst and René Magritte to the Pinakothek der Moderne in 2013. In 2016, Hartwig Garnerus was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit for his cultural commitment.
Hartwig Garnerus has built up his own art collection over the past 40 years. It is a collection that is shaped entirely by the collector’s perspective. And looks and gestures also characterize the 60 works – more than 40 paintings and 16 sculptures – in the current special exhibition. Garnerus focused primarily on the depiction of the human being, which reflects the upheavals of the period between the two world wars and at the same time expresses something hauntingly timeless. Visitors to the current special exhibition encounter haunting faces that tell of loss and vulnerability, but also of self-assertion and beauty.
On the occasion of the presentation of the exhibition and the announcement of the donation, the general director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, Bernhard Maaz, paid tribute to Garnerus’ “lifetime achievement”. Collection director Oliver Kase called Garnerus an “exception” as a patron and collector. It was also he who curated the exhibition, which shines from a deep, dark midnight blue. Hartwig Garnerus himself emphasized his longstanding association with the State Painting Collections. The collaboration was “something incredibly fulfilling” for him, which gave him “a lot of pleasure”. A joy that he now obviously likes to share with others.