Impressionism
Always on view: Hasso Plattner Collection
The Museum Barberini in Potsdam shows impressionist paintings from the extensive collection of Hasso Plattner, the museum’s founder. More than 100 masterpieces by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Henri-Edmond Cross, Paul Signac, and other impressionist and postimpressionist artists are on permanent display. With 38 paintings by Claude Monet, there is no venue in Europe outside of Paris where visitors can see more works by this painter. Potsdam is thus one of the most important centers of impressionist land- scape painting in the world.
Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley formed a group in the 1860s and revolutionized art with light-infused landscapes that were liberated from the traditional subject matter of the era. In 1874 they became known as the “Impressionists”: artists who preferred to work outdoors, capturing fleeting impressions directly on the canvas. Painters such as Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, and Gustave Caillebotte joined this new movement. More than a decade later, artists such as Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross further developed the painting style of these pioneers. Even in their Neo-Impressionist compositions, focus on the landscape remained linked to the liberation of color—an aspect that was reinforced by the high-key compositions of the Fauves such as Maurice de Vlaminck and André Derain. Impressionists, Neo-Impressionists, and Fauves followed the ideal of making nature tangible through color and light.
David von Becker
“The paintings involve us as viewers in a very direct way. We can practically feel the wind on our skin and the temperature of the water when we look at Monet’s sailboats on the Seine. No other art can do that. The Impressionists are geniuses of communication.”
Impressionism has been the focus of Hasso Plattner’s collecting since 2000. Roughly three years after the Museum Barberini first opened, Plattner has given one hundred works from his private collection as well as from the Hasso Plattner Foundation to the museum as a permanent loan. Featuring thirty-eight paintings by Claude Monet, no other venue in Europe outside of Paris offers more works by this artist. The holdings of compositions by Caillebotte, Pissarro, Signac, Sisley, and Vlaminck are also unique in Germany. Among the most famous works of the collection are Caillebotte’s The Argenteuil Bridge and the Seine (ca. 1883), Signac’s The Port at Sunset, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) (1892), and Monet’s Grainstacks (1890), The Palazzo Contarini (1908) and Water Lilies (1914–17).
With the new hanging in 2023, the collection presentation was comprehensively revised and expanded to include additional rooms of the Palais Barberini. In addition to a room devoted to landscape painting by the Fauvists (with works by André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Auguste Herbin, among others), the completely refurbished rooms include a room dedicated to Claude Monet's series. Among the 38 works by this artist in the Hasso Plattner Collection are two variations each from the Water-Lilies and the Grainstacks series, as well as a painting from the Houses of Parliament series.
DAvid von Becker
David von Becker
“No other collection can present Impressionist landscape painting as comprehensively and coherently in terms of its development and iconography. Through our works, visitors can learn about the fascinating history of the Impressionist movement as well as the further development of landscape through the Neo-Impressionists and Fauves.”
The presentation of the collection at the Museum Barberini spans the period from the 1860s to the early twentieth century and brings together works by three generations of artists who often worked together, traveled to the same places to work, and mutually inspired each other. Consisting of eight central chapters, the show enables visitors to trace the development of French landscape painting through the styles of Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Fauvism.
View of the exhibition
Over 100 works by 20 artists tell the story of French Impressionism—from its beginnings in the 19th century to its continued development by the Pointillists and Fauves of classic modernism.
