Rembrandt
Albertina Museum, Vienna
March 26 - June 27, 2004
With this large Rembrandt exhibition, the Vienna Albertina dedicates another exhibition to one of the main masters of its collection. It is the first retrospective on Rembrandt’s work in Austria.
The exhibition brings together 30 paintings by Rembrandt with the most significant examples of his graphical oeuvre – 80 drawings and 70 etchings. This gives a suspenseful insight into the great universality of this most important and influential Dutch artist of the 17th century.
Rembrandt’s creative genius, his fascinating technical mastery in all media and the wide thematic spectrum in his work is honoured in a unique manner. The exhibition is organised into thematically oriented groups, within which one can study the fascinating interplay between the individual media.
The exhibition shows self-portraits, figure studies, nudes and animal studies, portraits, mythological and religious representations as well as landscapes from all creative periods of Rembrandt’s work.
The exhibited paintings include major works such as „Flora“ from London, „Landscape with Stone Bridge“ from Amsterdam, self-portraits from Munich and Vienna and „Sophonisba“ from Madrid. Brilliant sheets such as the „Reclining Lion“ from Paris or the „Reclining Nude“ from Amsterdam as well as gripping scenes such as „Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert“ from Hamburg and countless landscape drawings filled with light, air and atmosphere will be shown.
Loans from the most important collections of the world complete the excellent Albertina collection of drawings and etchings by Rembrandt, several of which were already acquired by the collection’s founder Albert von Sachsen-Teschen – and which the Albertina is famous for. This is why the Albertina was always – and especially under its director Otto Benesch from 1948 to 1961 – an important centre of Rembrandt research.
Among the exceptional aspects of Rembrandt’s artistic personality was his versatile creativity both in the thematic and the technical area – a rare case in the Dutch Golden Century, during which artists increasingly concentrated on special areas, sometimes even only on one specific technique. Rembrandt’s versatility is even present within single media, as is demonstrated in the Albertina collection’s more than 40 drawings. Every artistic phase, every thematic area and nearly every technique is represented in qualitative examples.
Hence the arrangement of thematically oriented groups in this exhibition unfolded in nigh-on natural manner. This arrangement is not a forced construction, but rather corresponds to the way in which Rembrandt himself ordered his drawings. From the inventory list made of Rembrandt’s possessions in 1656 we were able to deduce that Rembrandt kept his drawn studies in albums that were systematically ordered by categories such as nude figures, landscapes, figure studies, animal representations, views, drawings of antique figures and others.
It is an immediate consequence of Rembrandt’s way of working that it is nearly impossible to demonstrate creative processes or coherent work groups in these thematic complexes. As far as research has shown, Rembrandt brought nearly all his compositions without preparation immediately onto the canvas or etching plate.
Almost all his works, whether painted, drawn or etched, were the result of an autonomous artistic process and can be regarded individually. A quick landscape sketch thus appears as „completed“ and closed within itself as an exemplarily produced etching or an intricately detailed landscape painting does; the small chalk study of a beggar may demonstrate the same concentrated gift of observation as a life-size portrait may. The spectrum of Rembrandt’s creativity comes to life in multifarious ways in the ever-returning tension between small and large formats, between sketch-like and carefully designed compositions, of fine line structures and generous artistic forms.
ALBERTINA MUSEUM
Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Wienwww.albertina.at
