Agenda

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) is one of the most famous artists of the 19th century. Zacharie Astruc (1833–1907), however, is almost unknown as an artist today. Initially he made a name for himself as an art critic: he was the first to publicly defend Manet’s works.

In the 1860s Manet painted him several times. With the Portrait of Zacharie Astruc of 1866, which is a part of the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Manet created a programmatic statement on the taste of the avant-garde. Everything the two loved and discussed is contained in the painting – Japonism, Spanish fashion, the art of the Old Masters and music.

This exhibition is the latest chapter in a series of major exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bremen on nineteenth-century French painters, such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte and, most recently, Emile Bernard.

The museum is compiling an exhibition about the international art nouveau movement. Key features of this style, which held sway throughout Europe from 1890 to 1910, are flowing lines and floral motifs. Another characteristic is the frequent depiction of females.

Many of them are divine figures taken from classical antiquity, Byzantine icons, medieval legends and contemporary muses. In the exhibition ‘Goddesses of Art Nouveau’ (Godinnen van de art nouveau) this fascination for female beauty is examined more closely in the context of the social developments of the period.

The exhibition features the females in jewels, sculptures, drawings, magazines and advertising material, book covers, book illustrations, posters, literature and on all sorts of decorative objects made of silver, glass or ceramics.

The Badisches Landesmuseum is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2019. The world renowned Karlsruher Türkenbeute is at the heart of the museum’s exhibitions – atrophy collection assembled by the Baden margraves from the 17th century Turkish wars. It is more emblematic of Baden’s history than almost any other collection, while also illuminating its European dimension. For the first time, the Grand State Exhibition is addressing historical and cultural linkages in East-Central and Southeastern Europe. The region, located in the heart of Europe, was thescene of war and ethnic unrest in the 17th century. Hungary, the Siebenburgen area, and the Balkan peninsula became transit and border areas in an era of tension between major powers. This corridor developed into a gateway for knowledge transfer on the European continent, the likes of which had never been seen before. The exhibition focuses on new developments in civilisation, created in the shadow of power politics and religious conflict: Innovations in architecture, art and fashion, or the introduction of new technical processes.  The exhibition presents around 350 Ottoman or Ottoman-influenced pieces. For the first time, it combines collections from Karlsruhe with the significant Türckischen Cammer of the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden) on a large scale. In addition, the exhibition also presents objects on loan from Budapest, Krakow and Vienna, as well as Ptuj (Slovenia).

Hôtel de Caumont Art Centre presents masterpieces from the Justin K. Thannhauser Collection, which were bequeathed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York in 1963. Some fifty major works from this prestigious collection will be presented in Europe in a travelling exhibition that began at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum: paintings and sculptures by the masters of Impressionism and post-Impressionism, but also by the most important figures in modern art, from Manet to Picasso, Degas, Gauguin, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Braque and Matisse. The exhibition also offers the visitor the opportunity to reconstruct the history of the Thannhauser collection through photographs, inventory books and other archive documents that illustrate the relationships between the Thannhauser family and the avant-garde artists, collectors and dealers of the time.