Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

The exhibition presents not only the artist's work and oeuvre, but also her networks and artistic background.

The beginning of the year belongs to the next generation: for almost 30 years, the Leipzig Children's and Youth Art Exhibition (Kijuku) has been presented at several locations in the city in January and February.

The Leipzig painter and draughtsman Werner Tübke was one of the most prominent artistic personalities of the GDR. The MdbK is taking the 20th anniversary of his death as an opportunity to shed new light on his work. From the 1970s onwards, Tübke travelled to Italy several times. Intensive experiences in places such as Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome, Capri and Sicily have since been reflected in his works in a variety of ways.

The BMW Photo Award Leipzig was presented for the first time in 2024. As the three winners of the first BMW Photo Award Leipzig Margit Emmrich, Susanne Keichel and Stephan Takkides were chosen by the jury.

The MdbK is showing a selection of works by Leipzig-born photographer Ludwig Rauch, including his portraits of Leipzig painters.

The MdbK will present Olga Costa's diverse oeuvre in a comprehensive exhibition for the first time in Europe. In addition to works from over 50 years of the artist's career, outstanding positions of Mexican modernism, such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, María Izquierdo, Rosa Rolanda or Lola Cueto, will also be on display.

With Re-Connect. Art and Conflict in Brotherland, the MdbK is showing an exhibition on the history of immigration in the GDR and its consequences.

The artist Hito Steyerl is presenting her installtion City of Broken Windows at the MdbK.

From October 10 to 15, DOK Leipzig opens the doors to "Nowhere Is Only Somewhere" in the Basement of the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig and cordially invites you to experience ten extended reality works.

The MdbK presents three large-format jute collages by artist Ibrahim Mahama

The MdbK presents the monumental work Internal Line by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota for the first time in Europe.

From now on you can also book your time slot for the exhibition Caspar David Friedrich and the Düsseldorf Romanticists online in advance.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Maximilian Speck von Sternburg Foundation, the MdbK presents selected masterpieces from the collection.

With the exhibition Cella Oscar Lebeck (*1993) presents photographic re-constructions of ancient cult spaces.

The motto of the 27th Leipzig Children's and Youth Art Exhibition in 2022 is: Alles Banane?

The artist's spatial installation combines paintings and sculptures in the thematic spectrum of intermediate stages and processes of change.

In the exhibition Ricarda Roggan. The Dark Wish of Things, the internationally renowned photographer, who teaches in Stuttgart and lives in Leipzig, shows works from the MdbK collection and new works.

The MdbK Leipzig presents one of its most important art treasures on the almost complete area of the third floor, spread over 14 gallery rooms and the central hall: painting and sculpture of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Anna Haifisch is the 14th winner of the Leipziger Volkszeitung Art Prize. In her impressive comics she deals with the social entanglements of the artist.

At the heart of Tino Sehgal's work is the idea that human situations can be interpreted pictorially, without objects or artworks being involved. He realises this approach with his "constructed situations".

Two paintings by Aelbert Cuyp (1620 - 1691), now owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the MdbK Leipzig, show views of his home town of Dordrecht in Holland. Originally, these two paintings were the left and right halves of a panorama-like painting. Now, for the first time, both parts are being brought together again.

On the occasion of the 125th anniversary of STIGA, the MdbK is devoting new attention to the women artists exhibited - underrated at the time and almost forgotten today.

The exhibition presents photographs by international artists from the BMW donation.

The MdbK is showing new works by young artists that were produced in connection with the 13th Documentary Photography Prize awarded by the Wüstenrot Stiftung.

DOK Neuland shows Extended Reality works as part of the Leipzig International Film Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig).

The greater form group, which does artistic research with children from Leipzig-Grünau, creates a spatial multimedia labyrinth in the MdbK.

With the support of Art Collection Telekom, MdbK is presenting the most monumental work by Polish artist Iza Tarasewicz.

With the Leipzig School as an important focus of the collection, the MdbK acquired works by Leipzig painters early on. But also works by the forerunners and subsequent artist generations form an important component of the collection.

In the MdbK, the current art development from Leipzig constitutes an important focus in the collection.

The exhibition 1950–1980. Photography from Leipzig offers both a history of the city in pictures and a history of photography on the path to artistic independence

SPECIAL OPENING HOURS on the last exhibition weekend: The MdbK invites visitors to immerse themselves in the photographic work of Andreas Gursky with extended opening hours.
Saturday, 21.08.2021, 10–22 h
Sunday, 22.08.2021, 10–20 h
No time slot reservations are necessary.

For information on our programme of events, please see our calendar.

This year's edition of DOK Neuland is dedicated to disorderly circumstances. Control, perspective seems lost, even more so in times of pandemic. But did order ever exist? And was it always good? For the first time, visitors can experience the XR works on-site at the MdbK and at the same time online from anywhere in the world from the comfort of your own home.

Underbelly is an entirely new immersive installation inspired by and developed for the luminous spaces of MdbK. In it, the viewer enters a sort of an oversized belly — soft and open for inspection.

With the exhibition Impressionismus in Leipzig 1900–1914 the MdbK addresses its own history at the beginning of the 20th century. The largely forgotten exhibitions of Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth, staged at the MdbK between 1903 and 1911, are reconstructed and correlated to the paintings purchased by the museum at that time.

The rediscovery of Karl Hermann Trinkaus (1904–1965) at the Bauhaus exhibition in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2009 was a notable success for the art history of Leipzig.

ˈzɛlpstbəˈʃʁaɪ̯bʊŋ is the german word self-description, written in phonetic symbols, a functional language used to denote sounds. The exhibition in the central atrium brings together pictorial artworks that are typical of Riedel and that serve as base material for a 22-part sound installation in which the images themselves start to speak. 

The Kaputtnik installation by the Leipzig artist Paule Hammer – specially created for the largest hall of the MdbK – towers 12 metres high as a human-animal hybrid. The artist and his team spent three weeks assembling the monumental piece.

Manfred Wakolbingers (*1952) large format metal sculptures thrive on the interaction with its surrounding architecture.

The art exhibition “The Optimised Human. Moments of Industrial Heritage in the Visual Arts” at the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig is a local contribution to the “Saxon Year of Industrial Heritage 2020”.

Leipzig around 1900: the city expanded from 101,272 to 456,000 inhabitants in the space of thirty years. The Kunstakademie is renamed the Königliche Akademie für graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in the same year.

Zwickau-born installation artist Henrike Naumann (*1984) is this year’s – and therefore the thirteenth – winner of the LVZ Art Prize, which was established in 1995. 

The use of social media has become an everyday activity, one that established and young artists cannot, and indeed do not want to, do without. They work with it. They are where their audience is. At first it was websites, today it is social media, particularly Instagram, when it comes to visual art.

The sculptural installation Vanishing Point of the Leipzig artist Wibke Rahn is situated on the top of the MdbK. The actual situation is streamed from the roof top to a big monitor in the foyer.

Johannes Keller has been working with Hans-Christian Neumann and Daniel Reimer on pictures, sculptures, reliefs, typographic pages and series’ for ten years as the OPAL artist group.

The Austrian artist Peter Baldinger created the Installation Happiness Is a Warm Gun for the big entrance hall of the MdbK.

The MdbK is devoting a major exhibition to Max Klinger to mark the centennial anniversary of his death and place the work of the Saxon artist in a European context.

For 37 years now the Leipzig painter Norbert Wagenbrett has been investigating different ways of portraying people. The retrospective unites portraits from all of his creative phases and is also the first institutional exhibition in his home city.

The group exhibition Zero Waste showcases international positions in contemporary art that point out the urgency to save resources, consume less, and live more sustainably. In diverse installations, videos, sculptural works, and photographs the artists investigate the global consequences of plastic packaging, tire abrasion, toxic chemicals, and the overproduction of consumer goods.

As part of the 5th International Poster Exhibition Leipzig 2020 and on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the Leipzig association plakat-sozial e.V. is showing a selection of 23 posters by international artists in the MdbK.

Resonating Spaces” is the title of the 6th Extended Reality (XR) Ex- hibition that can be experienced as part of DOK Leipzig. Nine works in total will be exhibited.

CONNECT Leipzig sees the MdbK offer space to young artists, giving them the opportunity to gather their first museum experience. An international jury selected ten young applicants from 120 submissions received.

Klaus Hähner-Springmühl (1951 – 2006) was one of the most influential artists of the oppositional art scene in East Germany. The MdbK has gone through his artistic legacy and compiled this retrospective, in conjunction with previously unshown works lent by private collections.

The group exhibition marking the 15th Marion Ermer Prize for the promotion of young contemporary artists in eastern Germany features work by the award-winners Fine Bieler, Ronny Bulik, Kirill Gluschenko and Jana Schulz.

The Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts is showing Trenkwalder’s most monumental work to date on its large terrace.

Once each year, the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts asks a Leipzig-based, female artist to propose an exhibition featuring the works of another female artist with ties to the city. Rosa Loy was selected in 2018; she suggested that the MdbK choose Angelika Tübke.

Bernhard Heisig (1925–2011) played an important role in the cultural and social development of the city in his positon as Rector of the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig (HGB) and as a prominent artist.

The MdbK is exhibiting two expansive installations by Ernesto Neto in the central hall on the third floor.

MalerinnenNetzWerk Berlin-Leipzig (MNW), which was established in spring 2015, organises frequent exhibitions and is committed to professional networking among its all-women painter members.

Erich-Wolfgang Hartzsch (* 1952) studied painting and graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden and was a member of the dissident art scene in the GDR

Nelly Schmücking’s animal sculptures are naturalist and artificial at the same time. Her intention in each piece is to form an equivalent to the natural role model.

Christoph Ruckhäberle as designed two special exhibition rooms with painting, installations and sculpture by invitation of the MdbK

Featuring 300 works by 106 artists from all genres, Point of No Return is the first appreciation of how fine arts perceived the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR and the radical change of East German society.

In Note to Self, Hurtig presents an intricate spatial assemblage that addresses the conflicts experienced by individuals when exposed to the pressure to self-optimise as entrepreneurial entities.

Ursula Reuter Christiansen (* 1943) studied at the Düsseldorf Arts Academy, where she enrolled in Joseph Beuys’ sculpture class. She married the composer and fluxus artist Henning Christiansen in 1969, moved to Denmark, and since then has focused on the media of film and painting. Rural, family life on the island of Møn and influences from the feminist art movement in Denmark feature largely in her work. The Red River is the artist’s first institutional, solo exhibition in Germany.

In his painting, Tim Eitel (* 1971) creates analogies with reality, using what he has seen and experienced to construct fictitious, parallel worlds.

DOK Neuland is presenting VR experiences and 360° films under the title in the scope of DOK Leipzig. The immersive worlds of the twelve new media works featured here, hailing from countries such as Kenya, Taiwan, and Israel, offer viewers a chance to encounter underrepresented narratives and stories situated beyond the usual perspectives of majority society.

27.10.2017 — 16.09.2018

Wang Qingsong (*1966) has a history of being known as the enfant terrible of contemporary Chinese art. His oeuvre combines traditional Chinese techniques of painting and a staunch rejection of everything normative.

The photographs of Chinese artist Ren Hang (1987-2017) thrive on their unbashful and provocative visual appeal. With the mark of explicit but elegant eroticism, they communicate through poetic, political, as well as humorous imagery. To this date, the artist’s polarizing photographs were only scarcely presented in Germany’s museums. The MdbK is now providing an all-encompassing insight into Ren Hang’s oeuvre, the first global exhibition of this sort ever since the artist’s suicide this year.

The exhibition is realized through cooperation with Ostlicht, Vienna.

The MdbK exhibition “Displacements/ Entortungen” initiates a dialogue between the work of two internationally renowned artists, Ayşe Erkmen (Istanbul) and Mona Hatoum (Beirut), in an unprecedented joint exhibition.

With awareness of fundamental questions that arise today, the project group Formation 7 was formed in 2017. It consists of 6 artists living in Leipzig, Germany: Anja Heymann, Marie Carolin Knoth, Mandy Kunze, Petra Polli, Oskar Rink and Susanne Wurlitzer. Once a year, they relate their own work to a jointly chosen 7th artistic position.

Women net artists 2.0 explore the possibilities and restrictions of social media. They question the female beauty ideals and gender stereotypes that have become standard in the attention economy of social media.

The Internet and social media have allowed a new generation of women artists to make their voices heard. Newspapers and magazines call them Tumblr stars, Instagram artists, or webcam princesses, while the net artists describe themselves as “reality artists” (Signe Pierce), “Instagram models” (Leah Schrager), or “online exhibitionists” (Molly Soda). They use smartphones, tablets, and computers to share their works and stream them live in social media, where the images and videos frequently become viral and then spread across the Internet.

Women net artists 2.0 broadcast their lives, play different characters, create alter egos, and assume a variety of roles. In this way, they make their audiences aware of stereotypes, clichés, and generalizations. The artists willfully blur the line between art and life—and sometimes erode it altogether. Viewers often react with a feeling of unease when artists like Arvida Byström or Molly Soda reflect critically on ideals of female beauty and disseminate images of, for example, their own menstruation or body hair.

The exhibition is devoted to the female gaze in the age of digital stagings of identity. With every new generation and fresh wave of feminism, priorities and media change. New media facilitate the development of novel ideas and the exploration of uncharted possibilities. In response to the rekindling of debates about sexuality and identity on the Internet and in social media, women net artists have developed a hyperfeminine aesthetics. They present themselves as aggressively feminine or girlish and cute. Their colors are pink, purple, and neon.

The artists featured in the exhibition present a female perspective on sexuality, identity, and femininity in the digital age. Their materials are their own bodies, realities, and everyday lives; their stylistic devices are humor, irony, the grotesque, and hyperbole. Signe Pierce and Leah Schrager play with the male gaze by ostensibly engaging in the art of seduction. Nakeya Brown thematizes the political dimension of hair. Stephanie Sarley frees female sexuality from associations with the obscene and the reprehensible, while Molly Soda and Arvida Byström push ahead with the debate on female beauty ideals. Women net artists know that it is especially the female body that is censored and controlled in social media.

In an ideal world, women would not be insulted and belittled; they would not have to feel ashamed whenever they depart from the norm and assert their sexuality. Women net artists 2.0 show what it means to be true to oneself and thereby encourage public debate.

The participating artists are Signe Pierce, Molly Soda, Leah Schrager, Refrakt, Nicole Ruggiero, Stephanie Sarley, Arvida Byström, Nakeya Brown, Juno Calypso, Izumi Miyazaki and LaTurbo Avedon.

Opening of the exhibition: Friday, 11th of January, at 6 pm

Anna-Eva Bergman (1909–1987) is regarded as one of the best Norwegian painters of the 20th century.She combines the experience of the Nordic landscape and light to form abstract pictures with an original design vocabulary.

Brandes’ analogue photographs taken in the twilight zone feature a surreal atmosphere through unusual angles of perspective and a feminist point of view.

The joint exhibition of Annette and Erasmus Schröter shows selected groups of works from the extensive oeuvre of the Leipzig artists, both of whom studied at the local Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. In the exhibition both the relationships and overlap as well as the respective independence of the artistic positions are apparent.

The works of the Leipzig artist Bastian Muhr (*1981) are an artistic interaction with the boundaries of the pictures, with their perception and ascertainability.

With around 60 paintings and numerous large-format drawings, the retrospective-style exhibition illustrates the artistic cosmos of Arno Rink (1940– 2017).

Virtual reality has emerged as one of the most exciting trends in the art world. Paul McCarthy (*1945) is known for his provocative sculptures. The work on display is the first time he has created a virtual sculpture.

Tilo Baumgärtel designed the scenery for the play „Erniedrigte und Beleidigte“ (Humiliated and Insulted) at theStaatsschauspiel Dresden .

Leipzig-based photographer Karin Wieckhorst (*1942) has created a comprehensive body of work. The MdbK is now presenting the central series “Begegnungen in Ateliers” (encounters in the studio) from the 1980s and “Frauenporträts” (portraits of women).

From 10 June the Leipzig-based artist Ines Spanier will be occupying her studio in the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, in the Alte Meister gallery, to be precise. Here visitors can observe how the artist continues her JerusalemII drawing, commenced in January 2017.

With his paintings Gil Schlesinger (*1931) shatters the expectations of the observer, so radical is the manner in which his works reject the traditional aesthetic. With this exhibition the MdbK looks to pay tribute to Schlesinger‘s extensive body of creative work against the background of his biography and trace Schlesinger’s unwavering path to abstraction.

Titus Schade created a stage set for the Schauspiel Leipzig for Elfriede Jelinek’s “Wolken.Heim”. The exhibition combines the stage set with a selection of canvases by the Leipzig-based painter.

In the exhibition, works from the MdbK inventory are excitingly combined with paintings from the private collection of the Leipzig businessman Steffen Hildebrand. As with CONNECT Leipzig, the exhibition is based on the idea of local networking.

The new film “Ikonen” from Julius Hofmann is now undergoing its premiere at the MdbK. Also on show are extended versions of the two first chapters of his “MoYE – Might of Young Engines” project

Christian Schellenberger’s preferred studio situations are cramped train carriages and high speeds. The first museum exhibition of the artist concentrates on 54 pen-and-ink drawings executed between 2014 and 2017 in the course of several train journeys between Berlin and Beijing.
 

August Sander (1876–1964) is regarded as one of the leading photographers of the 20th century. The MdbK is exhibiting a selection of 70 pictures from his famous portrait series Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century).

Amy Blakemore (* 1958) from Houston and Edgar Leciejewski (* 1977) from Leipzig will present new works in their first joint exhibition. The photographer
Leciejewski spent several months working in Houston in spring 2018, and Amy Blakemore then visited Leipzig to take photographs here the
same summer.

In accordance to the Leipziger Lichtfest on October 9, the artist collective FAMED organized a performance: Carrying transparent banners and shields, which bore the titles of the collective’s previous pieces of art and exhibitions,

I registered as an “official Leipziger” from the Rathaus, I got a yellow welcome Leipziger box, which feels like being extra accepted and also extra alien at the same time. What the “startpacket” means to me? So here are my Leipzig Startpakets…“

The slab tower blocks on the Brühl were erected in the years 1966 to 1968 by the former GDR regime as a symbol of socialism within the centre of Leipzig. At the end of 2007 these prominent buildings were torn down after years of discussion. The demolition of these structures represented the removal of a monument to German history, moving it from real existence to collective memory. I used two video cameras to record the entire, six-day demolition of the third and last building in a process lasting some 50 hours. My aim was to document the disappearance of these witnesses to an era that was of great importance to both Germany and the world as a whole, and to create an artistic memorial for the former residents and their lost memories.

One camera shows close ups of the demolition digger as it moves forwards into the interior of the building. Traces of the former inhabitants become visible, shortly before disappearing forever. In these images the head of the digger assumes an almost animalistic appearance as it repeatedly “bites” into the building, destroying it room by room. The second camera shows how the entire building is removed from the city scape as a whole. In the years that followed, this symbol of socialism was replaced by a structural representation of capitalist consumer society in the form of one of the largest shopping malls in Leipzig.

This December marks the tenth anniversary of the demolition. To commemorate this, I would like to present the recordings to the Leipzig public for the first time.

The documentation of the demolition of the slab buildings will be shown daily from 5 pm to 10 pm at the facade of the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig from 6 to 10 December.