Graphic Arts Collection
The Graphic Collection of the Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern has been a place of outstanding collecting passion for around 100 years and is one of the first-class graphic cabinets in south-west Germany. Art on paper can be studied here in all its facets, enjoyed and presented in a wider art-historical context. With prints, drawings and photography, the main genres of art on paper are preserved in the collection both in outstanding individual sheets and in extensive series, artist’s books or portfolios and are regularly presented in special exhibitions.
Works by masters such as Callot, Daumier, Goya or Rembrandt, whose famous etching “Self-Portrait with Sabre” from 1634 is a highlight of the collection, are important representatives of pre-modern art and at the same time pioneers of the graphic arts. However, the unique selling point of the collection, which is also characteristic beyond the region, lies in its specialization in art from the 19th to the 21st century. There is hardly any other place in the southwest where the development of art during this period can be traced as densely and with such high quality as in the Museum Pfalzgalerie.
The collection includes extensive holdings of works by the Impressionists Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth as well as the impressive Expressionist prints by Max Beckmann, Conrad Felixmüller, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein, for example. Artists with Palatinate roots such as Hans Purrmann, Otto Dill and Hermann Croissant are also comprehensively represented. A highlight of the early 20th century is the socially critical watercolor “Newspaper Carrier (Work Desecrates)” by Georg Scholz. The contrast between rich and poor is brought to the point here in the context of the social tensions of the 1920s.
The entire development of art in the 20th century can be comprehensively traced in the cabinet on the basis of outstanding works, and its plural styles such as Concrete Art, Art Informel, Figurative and Conceptual Art can be demonstrated. Pablo Picasso, Wols, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Franz Erhard Walther, Kiki Smith, Georg Baselitz and the American artists Adolph Gottlieb and Joan Mitchell are just a few examples. Their work complexes are constantly enriched by donations and purchases of more recent positions.
The Marianne and Heinrich Lenhardt Foundation, which was established in 1994, has rendered great services to the expansion of the Graphic Arts Collection. With its help, more than 500 prints by artists such as Henry Moore, Hans Hartung, Antoni Tàpies and Per Kirkeby have been acquired to date.
The Kabinett regularly compiles inventory and exhibition catalogs so that the wealth of art on paper is made accessible to visitors and researchers beyond Kaiserslautern.