Museum Berggruen
Schloßstrasse 1, 14059 Berlin
Schloßstrasse 1, 14059 Berlin
U-Bahn
Richard-Wagner-Platz or Sophie-Charlotte-Platz; S-Bahn Westend
Opposite the gold-spangled Schloss Charlottenburg, tucked
behind the solid walls of a former Prussian officers’ barracks building, lives a
rich collection of modern works from the 20th century.
Pablo Picasso is the undoubtable hero at Museum Berggruen. More than 100
drawings and paintings span this modern great’s artistic career from childhood
sketches to his Blue and Rose periods, through his ground-breaking journey into Cubism,
and up to his death in 1973. Complementary to this, an impressive accumulation
of 70-odd works by Paul Klee provides a sweeping view of the artist, backed up
with a number of pieces by Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti.
The collection is the stunning acquirement of private
collector Heinz Berggruen, whose accumulation of over half a decade was first
loaned and then sold to the National Galerie for permanent public
exhibition. The Museum Berggruen opened
its doors in 1996.
There’s no grand announcement of the museum; no large renovated,
windowed entrance. Just a wooden door with a gold plaque. An understatement
that belies what lies behind.
The
building itself was built in the 1850s by architect Friedrich August Stüler,
who is also famed for designing Berlin’s Neues Museum and Berliner
Stadtschloss. The strong neoclassical exterior of the old barracks is topped
with a cupola, which provides a nice mirroring of Schloss Charlottenburg’s
famous dome across the street.
There were few other gallery-goers on the day of my visit,
which emphasised the quietude and intimacy of this building. The architecture
itself focuses on a spiral staircase around a ground-floor atrium leading to
the fantastic glass-roofed cupola. Don’t forget to look up, of course, but
neither forget to look back down from the upper levels for a full sense of the
design. The exhibition space itself, runs a loop around the building, which
brings a nice fluidity to the viewing, as if one is really moving through the
artists’ timeline.
One of the fascinating aspects is the competitive yet
mutually inspiring artistic dialogue between Picasso and Georges Braque during
their Analytic Cubism phase. As a result, some of their works are almost
indistinguishable. The signature use of musical instruments; letters and words
inscribed in the works; bottles and glasses; and playing cards are present in
the work of both artists, as is the conceit of objects upon a table top. The
monochromatic neutral tones – browns mostly – and crystal-like composition provide
multiple dimensions and views into the objects, fragmented as they are to the
point of scarce recognition.
Picasso was a figurist at heart, however, and despite this Cubist style that took him to the edge of abstract art, he never journeyed over
the line into pure abstraction. His portraits, especially those of Dora Maar,
his lover of seven years from when he was aged 55, are powerful and deep works
that show the complexities of her character.
The journey through Klee’s many canvases is an unmissable
journey through both the delight and darkness of this artist. He developed a
particular use of symbols (the arrow, for example) and almost child-like way
of rendering figures. A versatile and highly trained artist who once taught in
the Bauhaus school, Klee’s abstract blocks of colour and pointillist words are as
arresting as his collages and line drawings.
Extensive renovations saw the opening in March 2013 of the
adjacent Kommandantenhaus, joined by a glass corridor, and designed to display
the full extent of the museum’s collection. Misfortune hit, however, when mould
was discovered beneath the roof just months after the opening. The annex has
been closed since October 2013 and is expected to remain so for a year. On our visit, the Klee collection had been
moved temporarily across the road to the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg.
