SPOT ON

In SPOT ON, the Hamburger Kunsthalle turns the spotlight on the finest works in its permanent collection. This unique presentation of more than 200 masterpieces from the Kunsthalle collection takes viewers on a journey through almost 600 years of art history: from exceptional works by the old masters to 19th-century and classical modernist art through to the art of the present day. The title of the collection display is borrowed from Richard Serra’s wall drawing Spot On (1996), which forms a black ellipse on a white wall like the negative version of a spotlight. SPOT ON focuses on highlights from the extensive holdings of the Hamburger Kunsthalle and encourages viewers to consider them from a different perspective.

SPOT ON features major groups of works by renowned artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, Max Liebermann and Edvard Munch, and also reflects the particular strengths of the Kunsthalle collection, which include Dutch Golden Age painting, French Impressionism, Expressionist works by members of the artists’ groups “Brücke” and “Der Blaue Reiter”, as well as the art of the 1960s. The exhibition presents key works that are regularly on public display, such as Max Beckmann’s Odysseus und Kalypso (Odysseus and Calypso, 1943), Édouard Manet’s Nana (1877), Caspar David Friedrich’s Das Eismeer (The Sea of Ice, 1823/24), Johann Georg Hinz’s Kunstkammerregal (Cabinet of Curiosities, 1666) and the panels of the St Thomas Altarpiece (ca. 1426–ca. 1435) by Master Francke, which are the earliest works featured. In addition to these outstanding paintings, SPOT ON highlights a number of site-specific works that entered the collection during the installation of the Gallery of Contemporary Art and have not been exhibited for some time. These include Ilya Kabakov’s Healing with Paintings (1996), an installation-based piece on the contemplation of art as a treatment for nervous conditions and and affective disorders, and Richard Serra’s impressive “splash piece” "Measurements of Time"  (1996), the production of which involved closing a central axis of the Galerie der Gegenwart to allow the artist to hurl 13 tons of molten lead against the wall and create five long bars of lead.

This new presentation creates surprising connections between familiar artworks, offering intriguing lines of sight across temporal and spatial borders: Serra’s installation, for example, is juxtaposed with Max Liebermann’s Netzflickerinnen (The Net Menders, 1887/89), while Ernst Ludwig Kirchner gazes out from his Selbstbildnis mit Modell (Self-Portrait with Model, 1910/1926) upon Anselm Feuerbach’s Urteil des Paris (The Judgement of Paris, 1870), and sculptural works from the four main areas of the collection are brought together in the central exhibition space on the lower ground floor.

Three thematic tours of the collection display SPOT ON have been developed and are outlined in an accompanying publication. This publication (40 pages, 35 coloured illustrations, 9,90 €) is available from the museum shop and at www.freunde-der-kunsthalle.de. The publication has been designed by the agency Heine/Lenz/Zizka that has also developed the campaign we’re open.  

SPOT ON takes place on the occasion of the modernisation of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. To enable preparatory works to be carried out, the “limestone building” and the “original Kunsthalle building” are closed. The Gallery of Contemporary Art remains open and presents SPOT ON along with a changing programme of special exhibitions.