Views of Hamburg

Hamburg has always been an attractive city for artists. Cosmopolitan life in the city centre, bustling activity in the harbour and on the Elbe, the pleasures on the Outer Alster lake and at the Uhlenhorst Ferry House, not to mention the rural idyll of the vale of the Alster tributary, have never ceased to inspire artists. At the end of the 19th century numerous artists started coming from all over Germany and abroad to work in Hamburg. From 1909 onwards, French artists like Auguste Herbin and Albert Marquet came to visit. In 1913, on invitation from the legendary director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle Alfred Lichtwark, even the late impressionists Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard came to Hamburg. Since 1889 Lichtwark had repeatedly persuaded painters such as Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, Friedrich Kallmorgen and Carlos Grethe to visit Hamburg. But also the younger generation of artists, the expressionists Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel explored the various facets of the city in their paintings.

In this exhibition of some 80 paintings the broad spectrum of motifs that Hamburg was able to offer the artists of early modernism will be presented for the first time.