Each Thursday the Museum Barberini presents special lectures (in German) on a particular aspect of the Hasso Plattner Collection or the current exhibition. Museum curators, conservators, and guides speak about their various disciplines and areas of work, offering a glimpse behind the scenes and offering new perspectives on the works of art.

Costs
€ 5 plus admission

Venue
Auditorium

Runtime
45 minutes

Please note:
The number of participants is limited to 35. Early booking is recommended.

Thursday, October 21, 2021
Ilia Repin, The Barge Haulers on the Volga, and the Wanderers Artist Group
Lutz Stöppler, art historian
Ilia Repin is considered the most important representative of Russian Realism, and his works are crucial to the development of Russian painting. Although he continued working in the style of history painting, his art was also influenced by French Impressionism. In this lecture, the art historian Lutz Stöppler will present key works by Repin including Ivan the Terrible and His Son, The Barge Haulers on the Volga, and The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and explain how his work differs from the art that was being produced in Moscow and St. Petersburg at the same time. 

Thursday, October 28, 2021
Gustave Caillebotte: Painter and Patron, Collector and Sailor
Gesine Harms, art historian
The painter Gustave Caillebotte reinterpreted Impressionism in an original way, both formally and in terms of content: thus, his breathtaking perspectives and unusual picture details led to a new way of seeing in art. His repertoire of motifs is as diverse as the artist himself: In addition to modern views of Paris, the passionate sailor and gardener painted boats on the Seine, regattas off the Norman coast, and garden idylls.

Thursday November 4, 2021
Russian Impressionists in France
Dr. Dorothee Entrup, art historian, Museum Barberini
Beginning in the early 1860s, Paris was a magnet for artists from all of Europe, and many Russian painters traveled to France. In the lively French capital, these painters encountered Impressionism. Influenced by the style and subject matter of French artists, they began to work outdoors and to focus on capturing fleeting moments. Many of the Russian painters in Paris were recipients of scholarships with strict requirements and obligations.
In this lecture, Dorothee Entrup will describe the life of Russian artists in France, explain how they adapted the approach of the Impressionists, and show how the Russian avant-garde movement developed from the French style of painting light.

Thursday, November 11, 2021
Cold as Crystal, Colorful as a Meadow of Flowers: The Snow Pictures of the Impressionists
Dr. Ira Oppermann, art historian
For the Impressionists, who were fascinated by reflections of light and color on water, winter scenes with snow, ice, and hoarfrost were a visual sensation. This applies to Monet, who painted around 140 winter scenes, as well as to Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte. This lecture investigates the climatic prerequisites, the radicality of the new winter scenes, and the characteristics of the individual artists. 

Thursday, November 18, 2021
Natalia Goncharova and Olga Rozanova: Two Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde
Dr. Ira Oppermann, art historian
The art scene in Russia around 1910 was significantly defined by women artists and patrons—unlike in the rest of Europe, where art was dominated by men. Even in the preceding decades, women painters were perceived as an independent group that was recognized in exhibitions and publications. The interesting phenomenon of the female presence in Russia will be examined in a lecture focusing on two exemplary artists, Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962) and Olga Rozanova (1886–1918). Both artists have complex oeuvres in various styles (including Rayonism and Suprematism) and, in addition to working as painters, also actively designed books, textiles, theater sets, participated in performance art, worked in fashion, and wrote poetry.

Thursday, November 25, 2021
Pissarro: Painter of Rural Life and Industrial Progress
Lutz Stöppler, art historian
Camille Pissarro, who was born in 1830 and is the oldest Impressionist, was also one of the most significant and prolific painters of his time. By the time he died in 1903, he had produced over two thousand paintings and just as many drawings and prints.
Under the influence of Corot, Pissarro’s initially preferred landscape painting. Later he also painted figurative works, peasants, and scenes of industrial progress in France. Together with the young painters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, he is considered one of the founders of Neo-Impressionism. Pissarro’s anarchist political views, a radical form of socialism, formed an important aspect of his biography. As a Jewish artist, Pissarro was a target of the antisemitism that was widespread in France in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Lutz Stöppler tells of the artist’s fluctuating fortune, tracing his development through the masterpieces from the Hasso Plattner Collection and recounting episodes from the extraordinary, politically active life of one the most famous French Impressionists.

Lectures for further dates will be announced soon.