From Monet to Picasso. Jewish Art Collectors in Germany honors and commemorates the decisive role Jewish art collectors played in the establishment, promotion, and defense of modern art since the turn of the twentieth century.
The exhibition reconstructs 15 important art collections assembled by German Jews before 1945. It brings together many of their modernist masterpieces, now scattered around the world. Approximately 100 works are presented, spanning from Realism and Impressionism to Expressionism and New Objectivity, by artists such as Paul Cezanne, Lovis Corinth, Ferdinand Hodler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Milly Steger, and many others.
The exhibition offers insight into the personalities of the collectors and their stories. Fifteen families, couples, and individuals are highlighted as representative examples of this collecting activity, including the Hirschland family, Paul and Clothilde Schüler, Max Meirowsky, Rosa Schapire, and Margarete Mauthner. Their lives, marked under National Socialism by exclusion, dispossession, persecution, exile, and murder, are brought into focus through historical documents and photographs.
