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Brucke-Museum
Address:
Bussardsteig, 9
The museum is devoted exclusively
to the group of artists called "Brucke" ("Bridge").
The group was founded in 1905 in Dresden by four students: Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich
Heckel. It is the oldest of the German groups of artists to
have a decisive impact on the development of 20th century art.
Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde joined in 1906 and Otto Mueller
in 1910. The "Brucke"'s pictorial language and its
critical attitude towards traditional academic painting fostered
the movement, later called Expressionism. This movement, apart
from its artistic achievements also came to express a new awareness
of life and freedom from rules and oppression by bourgeois society.
Soon it was endorsed by poets, writers and composers.
Expressionism sought to be a pure expression of colour and form.
Visible nature is evident in the paintings of "Brucke"
but it becomes the vehicle for a condition, an inner emotion;
powers of the soul and mind appear. The purpose of the artist
is not to create an image of objects but to convey an inner
concept. Visible reality is transformed and reduced to what
is essential. Colour undergoes a process of abstraction. It
is applied wildly in bold planes and breaks free from the natural
colours of the object, thus becoming an independent value. "Brucke"
Expressionism was not only confined to painting, it also appears
in drawings and the graphic arts.
The Brucke-Museum in Berlin, which collection is entirely devoted
to the works of the "Brucke" artists, demonstrates
the birth of modernism in a unique way. The museum was opened
to the public in 1967. The core of the collection was a generous
donation by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff to the city of Berlin, and
the prospect of receiving the entire estate. Erich Heckel also
supported the museum with extensive donations. The collection
then was systematically enlarged by subsequent acquisitions.
Today the Brucke-Museum owns around 400 paintings and sculptures
as well as several thousand drawings, watercolours and prints
from all creative periods of the "Brucke" artists.
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