Lovis Corinth at the Belvedere, Vienna

Lovis Corinth. Life, a Celebration! | Belvedere, Vienna

June 18 - October 3, 2021

Belvedere, Vienna

The many facets of Lovis Corinth: Both the classification of his work in the canon of art history and the ambivalences of his intense life continue to raise questions – who was this artist who, across epochs and styles, so effectively captured the essence of life in his paintings?

Lovis Corinth was a founding member of the Munich Secession. Together with Walter Leistikow and Max Liebermann, he was one of the leading figures and first chairman of the Berlin Secession. His artistic work equates to what might be called a leap into modernism: beginning in the 19th century,
he embraced all the great “isms” of the decades that followed – from Realism to Impressionism to Expressionism – yet he never fully committed to any of them. His paintings throughout, though, maintained the unmistakable stamp of his irrepressible vitality.

The motifs of his works are the starting point for the exhibition to trace the artistic career of Lovis Corinth and explain his unique position in art history: The eroticism thematized in nude portraits of his young wife at the beginning of his marriage, which gradually morphed into the theme of mother and child; the children growing up and family as leitmotif; but also vanitas symbolism, which he repeatedly incorporated in his slaughterhouse paintings and hid among his floral still lifes; and, finally, as the culmination of his oeuvre, the landscape paintings of the Walchensee.

This exhibition will subsequently travel to the Saarlandmuseum in Saarbrücken in November 2021.

A joint exhibition presented by the Belvedere and the Saarlandmuseum – Moderne Galerie

Curated by Alexander Klee.