Art history up close: The Neue Galerie shows hidden treasures!

Art history up close: The Neue Galerie shows hidden treasures!

A remarkable exhibition is currently running in the Neue Galerie Graz that brings art history to life: “Foreign and Familiar”. Under the curation of Günther Holler-Schuster, almost 150 exhibits were selected from over 70,000 works of art, which provide an exciting insight into almost 200 years of art development. This show, which vividly illustrates what life was like in the 19th century, shows the romanticized ideas people lived with back then. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller's portraits in particular reflect an idealized world of the rural population, as Holler-Schuster explains.

Highlights of the exhibition

The exhibition not only shows works by Waldmüller, but also by artists such as Herbert Böckl and Hubert Schmalix. These also include important depictions of cities by the artist Wilhelm Thöny, who impresses with his perspective on the lifestyle of the modern world. Thöny, born in Graz in 1888 and with a diverse career in cities such as Munich, Paris and New York, played a central role in European modern painting. A monograph published in 2013 for the exhibition “Wilhelm Thöny – in the wake of modernity” offers a comprehensive analysis of his life and work. This publication is a valuable reference work that provides both biographical and artistic insights and underlines the relevance of Thöny's work to the present day museum-joanneum.at determines.

The exhibition also shows how the view of the “foreign” has been influenced by time and culture. This is presented through images that complete the cliché of the so-called “noble savage” in a romanticized form. Anyone who visits the exhibition can become part of the artistic process by interacting with works of art, such as Erwin Wurm's One-Minute Sculptures, and experience the connection between viewer and art steiermark.orf.at describes.