Houston Fine Arts Museum to explore German Impressionism

The German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann -Corinth-Slevogt exhibition which is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, (MFAH) has been the focus of attention of art-lovers and curators across the globe.

The exhibition, which is on display from September 12 to December 5, 2010, will allow audiences to discover the little known chapter in German art and culture: German Impressionism.

The 19th-century art movement, Impressionism, is fundamentally associated with France and started as a loose association of Paris-based artists with independent exhibitions in the 1870s and the 1880s. The term was actually derived from the title of a Claude Monet's work, Impression, Sunrise, which provoked much critical opinions and satirical reviews.

How the term came to be associated with the state of Germany despite their hostility towards the French Republic following the Franco-Prussian War in 1870? Was there something more to Impressionism than Claude Monet, édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot?

The German Impressionist Landscape Painting: Liebermann -Corinth-Slevogt exhibition at the MFAH provides art connoisseurs a rare opportunity to explore these queries and discover interesting aspects in German artistic developments.

German Impressionist Landscape Painting presents a wonderful opportunity to explore why it took nearly 20 years for Impressionism to make its way from Paris to Germany, said Dr. Helga Aurisch, MFAH curator of European art and co-organizer of the exhibition in a statement.

Around 90 paintings by the remarkable German artists, Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, and Max Slevogt, are on display at the museum. A look at the exclusive landscape works by them leaves no doubt about the artists' source of inspiration from their southern colleagues like Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Vincent van Gogh.

However, looking more closely at the artworks, one can sense an unmistakable northern influence like the manipulation of the judicious touches by Monet with rapid brushstrokes and scribbles. Also, the usage of strong and contrasting colors have been found as opposed to the modulated hues used by their southern counterparts.

Often referred to as the German Manet, Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was a German Jewish painter whose love for artworks made him undergo periods of training in Paris. He later became the president of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1920.

Together with Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, who also supplemented their knowledge in artworks with extended stays in Paris, the trio emerged as major exponent of German Impressionism.

Also accompanying the exhibition at the museum will be forty graphic works, Drawing from Nature: Landscapes by Liebermann, Corinth, and Slevogt, which will be on view, illustrating the full range of their approach to landscapes.