BERLIN — BERLIN (AP) — Germany's largest private art collection, accumulated over four generations, is hosting a large-scale exhibition in Berlin for the first time that draws on a “who's who” of 19th- and 20th-century French art.
Scarf Collection has its origins in a collection created more than a century ago by Otto Gerstenberg, head of a Berlin life insurance company. It is now in the hands of Gerstenberg's great-grandson, René Scharf, and his wife Christiane, who have expanded it into contemporary art.
About 150 works will be shown in Berlin this week. Old National Gallery The range in time ranges from the early 19th century, with plates from Spanish master Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War and Tauromacia series, to contemporary abstract works by German artists Katharina Grosz and Anselm Reyle. Compositions by Sam Francis and Jasper Johns bring an American element to the collection.
“We go from Goya to Grosse,” said René Scharf at the exhibition’s presentation on Wednesday. He said he has a special passion for impressionism, cubism and modern art, and hopes that visitors who see Grosz's shimmering pink-and-blue painting “Untitled” at the end of the exhibition will see a connection to Claude Monet's Impressionist “Waterloo Bridge,” painted nearly a century ago.
At the heart of the collection are works by many of the greatest names in French art of the last two centuries. Visitors move from the romantic paintings of Eugene Delacroix to the realistic works of Gustave Courbet and the caricatures of Honore Daumier, including a series of busts of French legislators by the latter.
One of Claude Monet's early realist works, Animal Farm at Chailly, is displayed alongside later impressionist paintings such as Steep Cliffs near Dieppe and one of his Waterloo Bridge series. The works on paper and canvas include works by Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne, complemented by nudes and dancers by Edgar Degas.
Two major works by Pierre Bonnard are prominently displayed—the lively and playful “Place de Clichy,” depicting a Parisian square near his studio, and “Great Bath,” depicting the artist’s wife. They are shown alongside works by his close friend Henri Matisse, as the exhibition moves towards cubism and modernity with works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and others.
By the time of his death in 1935, Gerstenberg had amassed a large collection of works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and a selection of these became the centerpiece of the exhibition. There are lithographs from the “Elles” series, based on observations of sex workers in everyday positions, as well as posters advertising stars of concert cafes and pop theaters.
Scharf said that after the Old National Gallery approached him about showing the collection, “we asked ourselves, what will happen if we don't do anything? Then maybe 30, 40 or 50 people a year will see the collection, and only a very small part of it, because we can't hang it all at home.”
Individual paintings were lent to numerous exhibitions over time, “but at some point we said, 'No, the collection deserves to be seen publicly,'” he said.
“Scarf Collection. Goya – Monet – Cezanne – Bonnard – Grosse” opens to the public on Friday and runs until February 15. This will be followed by another exhibition at the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast from March to August 2026, which will feature some of the same works.
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Fanny Brodersen contributed to this report.