Max Liebermann and Italy

Max Liebermann, View from the garden looking east, around 1919, © Max Liebermann-Gesellschaft, Photo: Oliver Ziebe
Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee
4 MAY 2024 – 2 SEPTEMBER 2024

In the garden of his summer residence in Wannsee, Max Liebermann found pictorial motifs that would prove central to his later career. In the garden, laid out according to Liebermann’s ideas, more than 200 oil paintings and countless drawings and pastels were created. The permanent exhibition in the artist’s former studio presents a selection of paintings from Liebermann’s Wannsee garden along with paintings, drawings and pastels depicting the artist and his family.

The exhibition at the Liebermann-Villa will be dedicated to the artist’s relations with Italy and will focus in particular on his work with an Italian subject, on his personal contacts, exhibitions and on the critical success achieved by Liebermann in Italy. The exhibition will be divided into three parts:

1.A selection of works by Liebermann with Italian subjects.
In this first part, a selection of works with Italian subjects (paintings, drawings, watercolors and pastels) will be presented, in their various connections. Archive documents and photographic material will help to place the exhibited works in their context. The question relating to the role played by Italy as a travel destination for German-speaking artists contemporary with Liebermann will also be investigated.

2.A selection of works by Liebermann acquired by Italian museums.
To this day, at least twenty-five works by Max Liebermann are preserved in Italian public collections. Among these are sixteen prints and four oil paintings. Together with the self-portrait in the Uffizzi, there is the Portrait of the Painter Umbero Veruda from 1898 (Civico Museo Revoltella, Trieste), the small painting Bathers from 1899 (Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan) and Lace Workers from 1893, which became part of the part of the nascent International Gallery of Modern Art following the International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice in 1897.

3.Aspects on Liebermann’s critical success in Italy.
How was Liebermann received in Italy: as a German or Jewish artist? As a representative of naturalist or impressionist painting? If we consider the reviews of Vittorio Pica (Emporium, November 1903) and Guido Lodovico Luzzatto (La Rassegna Monthly di Israel, July 1931), Italian art criticism seems to express itself in positive terms on Liebermann’s art. Nonetheless, the existence of critical voices and the evolution of Liebermann’s reception will need to be investigated, for example following the advent of fascism and National Socialism. Regarding the topos of the trip to Italy, we also intend to focus on the art contemporary to Liebermann: what images of Italy did German-speaking artists develop and how did they in turn influence the Italian cultural world?

Curator: Alice Cazzola
Project director: Dr. Lucy Wasensteiner