Sculpture

The collection of three-dimensional objects is rich, spanning a period from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Medieval sculpture stands out with the most important and prominent work, a high quality crescent moon Madonna by Tilman Riemenschneider. But masters such as Dries Holthuys, Veit Stoß and Hans Schwarz are also represented with outstanding works. Sculptures such as Saint Jerome by Niccolò Fumo or the heads of prophets by Johann Joseph Christian embody the dramatic gesture of the Baroque period.

 

The area of small sculptures, which has been popular since the Renaissance - then as now coveted by collectors - is also excellently represented with works by Conrath Meit, Giovanni da Bologna (Giambologna), David Heschler, Lucas Faydherbe, Adriaen de Vries, Paul Egell or Balthasar Permoser through to Ernst Barlach and Renée Sintenis.

The focus of three-dimensional works in the 20th and 21st centuries is on constructive-geometric sculptures and assemblages or light-kinetic reliefs and mirror objects. Artists such as César Domela, François Morellet or Eric H. Olson dedicated themselves to the abstract figure in space, László Péri and Dóra Maurer expanded the sculptural pictorial space, Hermann Goepfert and Heinz Mack stand for the light-kinetic relief of the Zero artists, Adolf Luther and Christian Megert for the expansion of space by means of optical lenses and mirrors. The light object “Explosion” by Berlin-based artist Hans Kotter (2014) is the most recent example of the continuation of light kinetics in the present day.