A visit to the Buchheim Museum in Bernried is always worthwhile. Not only because of education, but also because the way to the museum is always connected with a walk, regardless of whether you come by car or train. Decisive for the visit are of course the diverse exhibitions that the Museum of Fantasy brings together under one roof. The expressionists play the leading role in this house. “Brücke und Secession” is the title of the show, which in the large hall deals with the impressionist-expressionist spirit of optimism at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also a last opportunity to see masterpieces from the Buchheim collection again in conjunction with pictures from the Gerlinger collection. Because of “fundamental differences of opinion about the implementation of the loan agreement”, the Würzburg collector Hermann Gerlinger and the museum terminated the loan agreement prematurely in September. Which is a shame, because the collections complemented each other perfectly.
Dynamic and moving: Katharina von Werz ‘”Adam and Eve in Spring II”, 2008.
(Photo: Katharina von Werz / Buchheim Museum)
Right next door, abstract expressionism has moved in with Katharina von Werz. Her title “Tanz vor der Stadt” refers to a central group of works by the Munich artist. In the wild swirls of color – Werz paints dynamically and spontaneously – figures in motion can be sensed, sometimes individual bodies, often couples holding each other in wild motion, wrestling, hugging, maybe even dancing. For Werz, chaos is a part of life, her central theme may be partnership, she says in an interview in the catalog.
Peasant painting: Shuling Wu’s “Pig hunt in the melon field” from the series “Field work”.
(Photo: Nikolaus Steglich / Ingrid Jansen Collection)
A very special highlight is the “Chinese Peasant Painting – Ingrid Jansen Collection”. Jansen, who lived in China for several years, became aware of these folk art pictures in 1987 in a Beijing gallery. She was deeply moved by the pictures with their unusual perspectives. So she traveled to Wangxia in northern China’s Hebei Province, made contacts, and began collecting the pictures. In the colorful peasant paintings, which were created between 1987 and 1997, i.e. in a short period of political thaw, there is no longer any trace of cultural revolutionary paternalism or political indoctrination. The amateur artists – mostly women – show a cheerful, self-determined world in bright, strong colors, thematically painting a cycle of village life between birth and burial. The fairs and festivals with drummers, acrobats and fireworks are not forgotten. There is even a vaccination campaign. Gorgeous. Lothar-Günther Buchheim would have been thrilled.
By the way, if you don’t want to walk the long way from Bernried train station to the museum, you should wait for the 9614 bus. On weekends it drives back and forth between Tutzing and Bernried every hour and always stops at the Buchheim Museum.
Bridge and Secession, until June 26th; Katharina von Werz. Dance in front of the city until April 24th; Chinese peasant painting. Ingrid Jansen Collection, until March 6, Buchheim Museum of Imagination, Bernried
Museum Penzberg – Campendonk Collection
This work by Gerhard Fietz is called “Mask” and can be seen in the exhibition “Forms of Inner Freedom” in the Museum Penzberg-Sammlung Campendonk.
(Photo: Trust Foundation Gerhard Fietz / private property, Fietz community of heirs)
You travel to Penzberg to see Heinrich Campendonk, after all, the museum there has the world’s largest collection of the youngest Blue Rider painter.
Nevertheless, a visit to the current special exhibition should not be missed. It is dedicated to Gerhard Fietz (1910-1997), co-founder of the Munich group Zen 49, who wanted to show “color as a phenomenon of one’s own life”. At first he still drew naturalistic, but from 1940 on Fietz devoted himself to abstract landscapes and organic forms, experimenting with the most varied of materials and techniques, until he finally found “forms of inner freedom”.
Gerhard Fietz: Forms of Inner Freedom, until February 27, 2022, Museum Penzberg – Campendonk Collection, www.museum-penzberg.de
Murnau Castle Museum
Gabriele Münter’s oil painting “Winter im Murnauer Moos” (1932), a permanent loan from a private collection
(Photo: Schlossmuseum Murnau, / VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2021)
In the Murnau Castle Museum, you can study that there used to be winters with a lot more snow. A small cabinet exhibition there focuses on the paintings and watercolors that show Gabriele Münter’s exploration of a wide variety of winter moods. And with the colors of the snow, which can clump together white-blue, shimmer turquoise on haystacks or shine purple in the winter sun. Gabriele Münter, in her variations on the snow, does an excellent job of capturing an intrinsically achromatic matter in different manifestations.
The museum also congratulates Markus Lüpertz on his 80th birthday in another cabinet exhibition. It shows a selection of works from private ownership that the artist created between 1964 and 2004, including expressive graphics and oil paintings between figuration and abstraction from the work cycle “Men without Women – Parsifal”, examples of his early “dithyrambic” painting and the great, 1993 sculpture “Odalisque”.
Snow colors. Winter pictures by Gabriele Münter / A divine journeyman. Markus Lüpertz on his 80th birthday, until March 27, 2022, Murnau Castle Museum
Franz Marc Museum Kochel
One of Horst Antes’ famous cephalopods, “Untitled (standing figure)”, was created around 1969.
(Photo: Walter Bayer / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 / Franz Marc Museum, Kochel a. See Foundation Etta and Otto Stangl)
Horst Antes Kopffüßler in the Kochler Franz Marc Museum is recommended for those who urgently need a mood-enhancer. On the one hand because of the intense colors, on the other hand because the striking figures exude an archaic force. With the cephalopod motif, Antes caused a sensation in the early 1960s, as he was one of the first artists in post-war Germany to let abstraction reappear behind him and the people in the picture. Even if as a fictional figure with a large head, always shown in profile, to which the legs attach directly. But Antes is not alone in the Kochler Museum. The newly presented collection can also be viewed, a stroll through the life and work of the host. Not only are the large paintings such as “Jumping Horse”, “Crouching in the Snow” or the “Donkey Frieze” much loved by visitors on display, the selection of oil sketches, watercolors, sheets of sketchbooks and woodcuts is also interesting. And the postcards that Paul and Lily Klee wrote to Marc.
The genesis of the cephalopod. Horst Antes on his 85th birthday until May 22nd, Franz Marc Museum Kochel
Olaf Gulbransson Museum Tegernsee
Marc Chagall’s work “About the Flowers” (1928-30) was thought to be lost until the Tegernsee exhibition.
(Photo: private collection / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021)
The Chagall exhibition is an attempt to attract more visitors to the small Olaf Gulbransson Museum in Tegernsee. So far, the house’s special exhibitions have focused on drawing and caricature, now it’s about famous names. The attempt seems to be working, the number of visitors has increased very positively. The focus of the show are the 42 sheets of the “Daphnis & Chloé” cycle. In addition, there are 20 more works by Chagall, works from private ownership that have rarely or never been exhibited, such as the oil painting “Bridal Couple with Cock” from the Hubert Burda collection or the picture “About the Flowers”, which is said to have been lost until the Tegernsee exhibition was valid.
Marc Chagall: A love story. Daphnis & Chloé and other works, until Jan. 9, Olaf Gulbransson Museum Tegernsee