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The New National Gallery, the "temple of light and glass" designed by Mies van der Rohe, houses the collection of 20th century European painting and sculpture. Ranging from early modern art to art of the 1960s, the collection includes works by Munch, Kirchner, Picasso, Klee, Feininger, Dix, Kokoschka, and many others.
Each year, a number of special exhibitions are on show at the Neue Nationalgalerie. During temporary exhibitions, the permanent collection is often not on view.
The collection
The collection features a number of unique highlights of modern 20th century art. Particularly well represented are Cubism, Expressionism, the Bauhaus and Surrealism.
The many facets of the development of Cubism can be traced in works by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Fernand Leger. The Picasso collection in the Museum Berggruen, located opposite Charlottenburg Palace, greatly complements this aspect of the New National Gallery's collection.
One of the most impressive parts of the collection is the art of Expressionism. The Gallery owns a number of important works by the artist group "Die Brücke", including paintings and sculptures by the Expressionists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel. A particular highlight is Kirchner's "Potsdamer Platz", a scene of Berlin nightlife painted in 1914, shortly after the beginning of the First World War. It puts today's Potsdamer Platz, just a few steps away from the gallery, in a fascinating context with its historic location.
Among the collection's major works are also eleven paintings by Max Beckmann dating from 1906 to 1942. They offer insight into the development of the artist's life work. Surrealism is represented with works by Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. Paintings by Otto Dix and George Grosz document the movements of Verism and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Sobriety). The Bauhaus is illustrated with works by Paul Klee and Vasily Kandinsky who were both teachers at the school.
The building comprises almost 5,000 square metres of exhibition space and around 800 metres of wall space - a surprisingly large capacity hidden half underground beneath the famous steel and glass construction.
The spacious glass hall at ground level and the basement gallery space are frequently used for special exhibitions attracting thousands of visitors each year.
For those who enjoy sculpture there are a number of works immediately surrounding the gallery as well as in the western sculpture garden. Visitors may gain access to the garden on request where a variety of important works ranging from figurative to abstract representation can be viewed in particularly pleasant and relaxed surroundings. | | Histoire | |
The Neue Nationalgalerie was opened in 1968 as the counterpart to the Nationalgalerie located on the Museumsinsel Berlin (Museums Island Berlin) in the eastern part of the city. As part of the Reunification, a collection of 20th century art is now located in the spectacular building by Mies van der Rohe. Insofar as the whole museum building is not being used as a separate exhibition venue on the occasion of major exhibitions, the Nationalgalerie presents its spectrum of works here which ranges from Classical Modern down to Art of the 1960s and 70s. The focus of the collection is on works by representatives of cubism, expressionists, of the Bauhaus, surrealism of the Group Zero and of American color-field painting as well as artists like Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and from the era after 1945 Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Barnett Newman, Morris Louis, etc. | | | |
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