Albertinum: permanent exhibition

Ausstellungsansicht Galerie Neue Meister

Please note that the exhibition is only open until 18:00 on 16.11., 23.11., 13.12.24.

Art from the Romantic period to the present day

Walking through the Albertinum is like opening a museum-sized art history reference work and leafing through its pages. With a range extending from Romanticism to the present, the Albertinum is a place where painting meets sculpture, East meets West and today meets tomorrow. The Thinker by Auguste Rodin, the trailblazer for numerous artistic styles that crystallized in the twentieth century, is the first work visitors see when entering the ground-level sculpture hall. Presented on simple black plinths and largely freestanding, the exhibited works show us the most diverse conceptions of three-dimensional art in their time.

Exhibition Site Albertinum

Opening Hours daily 10—18, Monday closed Thursday to Saturday 10—21 (Caspar David Friedrich. Where it all started) 01/01/2025 12—18 (New Year)

Admission Fees normal 12 €, reduced 9 €, under 17 free, groups (10 persons and more) 11 €

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There is Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s 1911 Kneeling Woman, a figure with overly-long limbs and a stretched torso who conveys in her stance a certain sense of life. In 1937, the work was confiscated in the Nazis’ “degenerate art” campaign, but was then presented again at the first Documenta exhibition after the Second World War as a possible connecting point for new figurative sculpture. At the Albertinum today stands the only surviving stone cast of the work in Europe. It is only steps away from Tony Cragg’s mathematically stacked cube made of wood, fabric scraps and loose-leaf binders from 1980 and from Birgit Diecker’s Seelenfänger from 2005: lifebuoys, some new, some worn and unsound, are entangled in rope and call to mind questions about the people who once used them.

In the remaining presentation at the Albertinum, painting and sculpture enter a dialogue again and again. This holds for the special exhibitions as well, which focus predominantly on contemporary art, for example the recent showcasing of performance artist Tino Sehgal, films by Rosa Barba and new work by Gerhard Richter. This Dresden-born painter has been given two permanent spaces here. At the other end of the presentation, world-famous masterworks by Caspar David Friedrich, the most significant German Romantic artist, are on show.

eine Landschaft in der Abenddämmerung mit Wasserflächen und Bäumen — **Caspar David Friedrich, Das Große Gehege bei Dresden, 1832** Öl auf Leinwand

ein Mann auf einem Kamel in einer Wüstenlandschaft — **Max Slevogt, Sandsturm in der Lybischen Wüste, 1914** Öl auf Leinwand, 73,5 x 95,5 cm, Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister

etwa ein Dutzend aufeinandergehäufte Quitten — **Vincent van Gogh, Quittenstillleben, 1888/89** Öl auf Leinwand, 46 x 59,5 cm, Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister

ein Skifahrer, der im Schnee sitzt, mit unkenntlichem Gesicht — **Luc Tuymans, Der Architekt, 1997/ 98** Öl auf Leinwand, 113 x 144 cm, Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister

zwei Mädchen, die in sommerlicher Kleidung auf dem Boden sitzen — **Paul Gauguin, Parau Api, Gibt’s was Neues, 1892** Öl auf Leinwand, 67 x 92 cm, Albertinum | Galerie Neue Meister

Skulptur eines nackten Mannes, der seinen Kopf auf die rechte Hand stützt — **Auguste Rodin, Der Denker, 1881-83** (Vergrößerung 1903), Gips; Albertinum / Skulpturensammlung ab 1800

Skulptur einer nackten Frau, die auf einem Bein kniet — **Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Kniende (1911)** Steinguss, Albertinum / Skulpturensammlung ab 1800

Skulptur eines Mädchens in Tanzkostüm — **Edgar Degas, Vierzehnjährige Tänzerin, 1878/ 81** Bronze, Tüll; Albertinum / Skulpturensammlung ab 1800

rote Skulptur aus Metall in geometrischen Formen — **Hermann Glöckner, Untere Faltungszone vom Mast (1975)** Metall, lackiert; Albertinum / Skulpturensammlung ab 1800

Next to Two Men Contemplating the Moon is The Grosse Gehege near Dresden, which the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno described as the first modern painting and which sociologist Bruno Latour used in identifying our geological epoch as the Anthropocene. Following further Romantic painters such as Carl Gustav Carus, Johan Christian Dahl and Ludwig Richter are French and German Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Max Liebermann. Works by Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh create a transition to the Expressionists, who are both international, such as Oskar Kokoschka, or German, such as members of the Dresden artist group Die Brücke: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and others.

Among the highlights of the permanent exhibition is the war triptych by Otto Dix, the Dresden-born exponent of New Objectivity. In addition to works by further artists of the Dresden Secession such as Bernhard Kretzschmar and Carl Lohse, the Galerie Neue Meister distinguishes itself through one of the most significant museum collections of East German art, as well as through its works by internationally successful contemporary artists such as Neo Rauch, Marlene Dumas and Ai Weiwei.

On the first floor, the Klingersaal – a period room with sensuous red walls and wall panelling – presents mainly fin-de-siècle art, with artists ranging from Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger to Franz von Stuck and Sascha Schneider. The Classicist Mosaiksaal opens new perspectives on sculpture and is often used as a contrasting canvas for contemporary art shows.