Cultural City of Chemnitz in Saxony Shows
German Expressionism
Until June 26, the Kunstsammlung Chemnitz (Chemnitz Art Collections) features the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter, two famous schools of German Expressionism painting.
March 29, 2022 -- Celebrating its cultural heritage and its recognition as the European Capital of Culture in 2025, Chemnitz is taking center stage in the art world with its enormous exhibition of German Expressionism. Famous names, including Kandinsky, Kirchner, Klee, Marc, Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff are significant because they were the proponents and practitioners of early modernism in Germany. They and their friends belonged to these most important artists’ groups of early modernism in Germany: Brücke und Blauer Reiter.
Today these names stand for the awakening of the Expressionist avant-garde prior to the First World War, as they “liberated colour from any compulsion to reproduce reality and led art towards abstraction,” according to the preparation from the Kunstsammlung Chemnitz. And now, for the first time in more than 25 years, these artists and their group dynamics are to be exhibited in Germany together with numerous masterpieces of modernism.
Major works by the two groups from the foremost collections of the Buchheim Museum (on the Starnbergersee near where many of the Blaue Reiter lived and worked), from the Von der Heydt-Museum (close to Duesseldorf), from the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz and from national and international lenders, combine to form an intense and extraordinary show. The catalogue and accompanying program highlight the artistic achievement of these figures in the context of their time and examine the legacy of Expressionism in the 20th century.
Although the two artist groups were similarly famous, die Brücke is for Saxony very important as it was founded in Dresden and some of its most important members hailed from Chemnitz and neighboring towns. Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, the co-founders, met each other in grade school in Chemnitz. They also participated from an early age in a popular debate club, Vulkan, where they discussed many of the contemporary philosophers, including Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. It was said that this debate club formed a backbone of the eventual artist group and that the thinkers of the time influenced the early works of the artists. At the time, and still to this day, you can see many of the Expressionist painters in Chemnitz all year long.
This exhibition of the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter will be showing at the Chemnitz Art Collections (Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz) until June 26. Nearby, the Gunzenhauser Museum, the newest addition to the Chemnitz Art Collections, has one of the most important art collections in Germany, including Otto Dix and many famous members of the Expressionist movements. Chemnitz’s other famous artistic centers include smac: Chemnitz State Museum of Archaeology, a famous semi-circular department store building in Chemnitz’s Brückenstraße, a work by the important architect Erich Mendelsohn, and the Henry van de Velde Museum in the Villa Esche which was designed by Belgian artist Henry van de Velde and is an architectural monument to modernism and art nouveau. Chemnitz also has a significant performing arts scene, including opera, ballet, a renowned puppet theatre as well as a sophisticated drama theater and the Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie.
In the 19th century, Chemnitz flourished with the growth of industry which provided the capital and support for supporting the arts. Successful citizens gave commissions to artists, architects and designers, thereby making a lasting investment in the city’s attractiveness. Since then and thanks to its consistently strong economy, Chemnitz has succeeded in maintaining, preserving and enhancing its urban landscape despite the social upheavals it has experienced.
Today, Chemnitz has earned its well-deserved place in the cultural annals as the 2025 European Capital of Culture. With the motto “C the unseen,” Chemnitz2025 directs its gaze to the unseen: the unseen of the “quiet center,” the unseen city, the unseen European neighbors, the unseen places and biographies, the unseen talents in each individual.
Saxony is truly a State of the Arts and its cultural cities are non-stop creating, developing, pushing physical and artistic boundaries of expression, building communities, restoring old places as well as building for the future. Chemnitz along with Dresden and Leipzig are gems in Saxony’s cultural crowns and exciting and inspiring places to visit.
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