Pieces to See – Lakeviews / Impressions of Brandenburg’s Waters
Sehstücke – Seeblicke / Impressionen märkischer Gewässer
“… but the eye, wherever it may be drawn by the variety of the picture, always returns to the mysterious lake…”
In 1863, in the second volume of his Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, Theodor Fontane thus describes the magic of Lake Schermützelsee in the Märkische Schweiz. It seems as though, with these words, he anticipated the depictions of the Havelland painters that would begin to emerge from the 1880s onwards.
In the area of present-day Brandenburg, the Ice Age left behind around 3,000 inland bodies of water. Human intervention added numerous artificially created ponds, drainage ditches and canals. One of the largest lakes is the Schwielowsee. Painters – beginning with Karl Hagemeister, who was born in Werder – were struck by the understated beauty of the region. The waterways that define the Brandenburg landscape virtually imposed themselves as the central element of the compositions. What united these artists over several decades was their artistic rendering of an immediate experience of nature – an immersion in a world apart from the metropolis of Berlin.
Within the overarching theme of “water”, the exhibition will explore individual aspects. On view will be works in which artistic feeling reaches beyond outward observation and the landscape becomes, as it were, a sounding board for the artist’s soul. This applies above all to Walter Leistikow, whose forest lake paintings have been widely received. Alongside these are deliberately understated landscape details capturing the changing seasons and times of day. A dedicated chapter is given to water as leisure – here primarily sailing and rowing boats on the Wannsee, as seen in works by Philipp Franck. Hans Baluschek, by contrast, depicts the encounter between the working class seeking recreation and the bourgeois world. With Magnus Zeller, the Schwielowsee finally becomes a place of retreat in times of political oppression.
The exhibition also offers a particular highlight: Liebermann’s Birches on the Lakeshore in the Wannsee Garden from 1918, in a copy made by his fellow artist Eugen Spiro.
