Dusseldorf
Max Liebermann to get to know better – exhibition shows which painters he admired
This is how we normally know Max Liebermann: a serious, venerable and also established painter. But it was a long way to get there, as the Düsseldorf Museum Kunstpalast is currently showing in an exhibition.
© dpa/ / Picture Alliance
Max Liebermann – the name evokes memories of Berlin during the Imperial Era and stands for Impressionism in Germany. An exhibition in Düsseldorf shows how far the painter’s journey there was.
Traveling to France as a German was not a good idea in the late 19th century. Despite this, Max Liebermann went to Paris in 1873, but was initially ignored by his French painter colleagues. Germany and France were the hereditary enemies. At first it probably didn’t help that Liebermann was a cosmopolitan and came from a Jewish family.
Liebermann must have been a strong personality with a lot of perseverance – because he spent a full five years in France, where he worked in the “Barbizon School”, an association of landscape painters in the countryside south of the French capital, making his way out of the studio found outdoors. It would also be his path to the Impressionist style we admire so much today. Max Liebermann painted people and landscapes in a straightforward and unpretentious manner. He is considered the most important representative of Impressionism in Germany, his play with light fascinates people in ever new exhibitions.
How did Max Liebermann become the world-famous German Impressionist?
How he became the painter we know today is the question that the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf will be investigating in an exhibition starting this Thursday. Around 120 paintings can be seen until May 8 under the title “I. Max Liebermann – A European Artist” – in addition to works by Liebermann, there are also paintings by artists who influenced him. There are works by contemporaries of the Berliner such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Jean-François Millet and his Dutch role models Rembrandt van Rijn and Frans Hals.
“Liebermann is regarded as a painter who is well connected among European artists,” said the general director of the Kunstpalast, Felix Krämer, before the opening of the Düsseldorf exhibition. Van Gogh and Edgar Degas admired Liebermann. He was initially inspired by Dutch painting and then French Impressionism.
It should be an interesting experience for exhibition visitors to trace the career of Liebermann, who in his 87-year life left behind a vast treasure trove of paintings that are now on display in many of the world’s major museums.
The exhibition in the Düsseldorf Museum Kunstpalast is divided into nine chapters that show turning points in his life and work. It is less known, for example, that Liebermann painted very naturalistically as a young painter and was initially defamed as a “dirty painter”. The work “Die Gänserupferinnen” from 1872 shows women in a very realistic way – exactly: plucking gooses, which caused a shake of the head among his contemporaries because of the less than glamorous motif.
Van Gogh made a similar faux pas a good 13 years later with his “Potato Eaters”. The now world-famous painting, which shows ordinary people eating potatoes, was simply extremely ugly by its contemporaries.
Max Liebermann shaped art in Germany and Berlin in his time
Max Liebermann went his own way – and was a respected and celebrated artist during his lifetime, who later returned to his native Berlin, where he also died in 1935. For a long time he was president of the artist group Berlin Secession and then of the Prussian Academy of Arts. During the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, he was one of the most influential personalities in the Berlin art scene.
By the end of his life, the National Socialists had seized power in Germany and pushed Liebermann out of the public eye. And so it was not even worth the news to the new rulers that the greatest German impressionist died on February 8, 1935.
Sources: “Museum of Art Palace“, “WDR“, “Rheinische Post“
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