main content start,
Adolph Menzel, Ein tanzender Maler (Selbstbildnis), Detail, flüchtige Skizze zu „Kronprinz Friedrich besucht den Maler Antoine Pesne während der Arbeit auf dem Gerüst“, um 1861
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Ein tanzender Maler (Selbstbildnis), Detail, flüchtige Skizze zu „Kronprinz Friedrich besucht den Maler Antoine Pesne während der Arbeit auf dem Gerüst“, um 1861 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Ein tanzender Maler (Selbstbildnis), flüchtige Skizze zu „Kronprinz Friedrich besucht den Maler Antoine Pesne während der Arbeit auf dem Gerüst“, um 1861
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Ein tanzender Maler (Selbstbildnis), flüchtige Skizze zu „Kronprinz Friedrich besucht den Maler Antoine Pesne während der Arbeit auf dem Gerüst“, um 1861 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Schlittschuhläufer, Detail, 1855/1856, schwarze, weiße und farbige Kreiden, fixiert, auf braunem Vélinpapier
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Schlittschuhläufer, Detail, 1855/1856, schwarze, weiße und farbige Kreiden, fixiert, auf braunem Vélinpapier © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Herr im Coupé, Detail, 1859
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Herr im Coupé, Detail, 1859 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Dame im Coupé, Detail, 1859
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Dame im Coupé, Detail, 1859 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Ein Schutzmann im Winter, Detail, Profilansicht in ganzer Gestalt von links), 1860/1865
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Ein Schutzmann im Winter, Detail, Profilansicht in ganzer Gestalt von links), 1860/1865 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Oberregierungsrath Knerk, Detail, Brustbild nach links, 3/4-Profil, mit Bezeichnung des Dargestellten, Porträtstudie zum Gemälde „Die Krönung Wilhelms I. in Königsberg“, 1863/1865, Aquarell und Gouache über Vorzeichnung mit Bleistift auf Vé
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Oberregierungsrath Knerk, Detail, Brustbild nach links, 3/4-Profil, mit Bezeichnung des Dargestellten, Porträtstudie zum Gemälde „Die Krönung Wilhelms I. in Königsberg“, 1863/1865, Aquarell und Gouache über Vorzeichnung mit Bleistift auf Vélinpapier © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
Adolph Menzel, Der rote Ara und Kakadus, Detail, aus dem „Kinderalbum“, 1863-83, Gouache auf Papier
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Der rote Ara und Kakadus, Detail, aus dem „Kinderalbum“, 1863-83, Gouache auf Papier © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Tafelgeschirr: Fischschüssel, 1882, Gouache und Aquarell, Silber- und Goldbronze auf Papier
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, Tafelgeschirr: Fischschüssel, 1882, Gouache und Aquarell, Silber- und Goldbronze auf Papier © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, 50 Jahre Maschinenfabrik Heckmann in Berlin, Adresse zum Jubiläum der Firma Heckmann, 1869, Gouache
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders
Adolph Menzel, 50 Jahre Maschinenfabrik Heckmann in Berlin, Adresse zum Jubiläum der Firma Heckmann, 1869, Gouache © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders

Adolph Menzel was the eye of the nineteenth century. In autumn of 2019, the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett – which possesses the largest collection of works on paper by this German artist, comprising more than 6,000 works – is rediscovering Menzel as a painter of works on paper with a major solo exhibition. The show will feature around 100 works in watercolour, pastels and gouache from the museum’s own holdings, along with a number of key loans. Together, they offer the first comprehensive survey of Menzel’s painterly works on paper.

Adolph Menzel (1815–1905) is known as a painter of large works on canvas, and as the creator of countless studies in pencil. But it was first as a painter of works on paper that he began to employ the full palette of his artistic gifts of expression, creating colourful works ranging from experimental portrait studies through to elaborately composed paintings.

The majority of the works shown in the exhibition are standalone works, however there are also a number of preparatory studies for famous paintings – including the portrait studies carried out in preparation for the coronation picture commissioned by King Wilhelm I, which Menzel painted between 1861 and 1865, and which represents the largest and of Menzel’s paintings, depicting countless figures.

The exhibition presents the different sides of Menzel’s work as a painter of works on paper chronologically and according to techniques, arranging selected works into 10 ‘chapters’. At the same time, it gives visitors an insight into the specific effects of watercolours, pastels and gouache, and Menzel’s particular mixed technique. There is a particular focus on his pastel technique, which between the mid-1840s and the late 1850s functioned as a crucial bridge between drawing and painting for Menzel.

Alongside fragmentary sketches, the show will also feature experiments and abandoned drafts – such as a detailed “drapery study” rendered by Menzel in luminous chalk on paper, and later destroyed with energetic gestures.

Hidden among the scenic depictions, a particular sensation awaits audiences in the form of the portrait pair Gentleman and Lady in a Train Compartment (1859), which first joined the collection in 1907. Presumed lost for decades after disappearing during the Second World War, the “Lady” was recently able to be regained for the Kupferstichkabinett’s collection. The couple, so cold in their interaction with one another, observed by Menzel with his keen sense for the twists and turns of human relationships, is now back together for the first time in more than 70 years.

Also on show are works that are not just sketched out as scenes, but are also worked over in other media covering the full expanse of the sheet. Platz für den großen Raffael (Room for the Great Raphael), a loan from the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, represents Menzel’s tendency to rework pictures using various techniques: begun in 1855 in pastels, Menzel completed the work four years later in gouache.

The figures in Schlittschuhläufer (Ice Skaters), acquired for the Kupferstichkabinett in 2018, are also rendered by Menzel in pastel on a monumental scale – in this case though, the work was not later reworked in gouache. This work was produced in 1855, shortly after Menzel’s first visit to France, and bears testament to the modernity that Menzel had been able to witness first hand in Paris, and which is represented in the exhibition by the loan from the Hamburg Kunsthalle, Erinnerung an Paris (Memory of Paris).

From the 1860s onwards, Menzel’s production was dominated by a polished gouache and mixed technique. An impressive example of this can be found in Schutzmann im Winter (Constable in Winter, 1860/1865), a full-sheet depiction of his own contemporary context. As was the case with the portrait Oberregierungsrath Knerk (Senior Privy Councillor Knerk, 1863/1865), the whereabouts of the Constable had been unknown since 1941 as a result of the war. Back in the museum’s collection as of this spring, the works can now be presented to the public once more.

The exhibition is capped off by three outstanding groups of works from the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett: the Kinderalbum (Children’s Album), which was produced as an unbound series of 44 gouache paintings for Menzel’s niece Gretel and nephew Otto; the commissioned work on the designs for the “kitchenware” made by the Royal Porcelain Manufacture Berlin for the silver wedding anniversary of the Crown Prince and Princess in 1883; and Menzel’s idiosyncratically interpreted allegories.

Opening hours,

  • Monday closed
  • Tuesday-Friday 10:00 - 18:00
  • Saturday-Sunday 11:00 - 18:00
  • 1. January 12:00 - 18:00
  • 3. October 11:00 - 18:00
  • 24. December closed
  • 25. December 11:00 - 18:00
  • 26. December 11:00 - 18:00
  • 31. December closed

Location,

Kupferstichkabinett
Matthäikirchplatz 8, 10785 Berlin

Telephone,

+49 (30) 266 42 42 42

Website,

www.smb.museum/en/exhibi…

Prices,

Admission price 6,00 €

Special exhibition room Kupferstichkabinett. Kulturforum all exhibitions: 16,00 €

Reduced price 3,00 €

Special exhibition room Kupferstichkabinett. Kulturforum all exhibitions: € 8.00

Buy ticket

Related Events

Tickets

Admission price

6,00 €

Special exhibition room Kupferstichkabinett. Kulturforum all exhibitions: 16,00 €

Reduced price

3,00 €

Special exhibition room Kupferstichkabinett. Kulturforum all exhibitions: € 8.00

Yearly ticket

Click here for information about Yearly ticket.

Member of Museumspass Berlin

Booking Telephone

+49 (30) 266 42 42 42

Buy ticket

Catalog

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive publication released by Imhof Verlag.

Ordering possibilities

Services

Service Telephone

+49 (30) 266 42 42 42

Organizer

Links

Accessibility

More Exhibitions

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Porträt Otto Mueller, Detail, 1915, Farbholzschnitt von zwei Stöcken
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Jörg P. Anders

Rescued Modernism

Masterpieces from Kirchner to Picasso

Fritz Rhein, Dame auf Sofa, Detail, 1905
© Bildnachweis: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger (CC BY-NC-SA)

(Un)seen Stories

Suchen, Sehen, Sichtbarmachen

Johan Barthold Jongkind, Abendsonne – Hafen von Avers, Detail, 1868, Radierung
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz

A Different Impressionism

International Printmaking from Manet to Whistler

Joseph Beuys, Das Kapital Raum 1970–1977, Detail, 1980, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Sammlung Marx
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Thomas Bruns © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023

Permanent exhibition

Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

Joseph Beuys

Collection Presentation

Near by

Keyvisual der Ausstellung „More Than Human. Design nach dem Anthropozän“
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum / Gestaltung: cyan Berlin

Permanent exhibition

Kunstgewerbemuseum

More than Human

Design after the Anthropocene

Joseph Beuys, Das Kapital Raum 1970–1977, Detail, 1980, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Sammlung Marx
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Thomas Bruns © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023

Permanent exhibition

Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

Joseph Beuys

Collection Presentation

Cookie-Policy

We use cookies to provide the best website experience for you. By clicking on "Accept tracking" you agree to this. You can change the settings or reject the processing under "Manage Cookies setup". You can access the cookie settings again at any time in the footer.
Privacy | Imprint

Cookie-Policy

We use cookies to provide the best website experience for you. By clicking on "Accept tracking" you agree to this. You can change the settings or reject the processing under "Manage Cookies setup". You can access the cookie settings again at any time in the footer.
Privacy | Imprint