Original reflections, spatial nesting and sophisticated lighting were the focus of the painter and scientist Johann Erdmann Hummel (1769 – 1852). His artistic work is characterized by sober objectivity on the one hand and by an stubborn, witty, transcendent attention to detail on the other.
The artist, who was born in Kassel, came to Berlin in 1800. There he received the professorship for optics, perspective and architecture at the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1809. His teaching, research and publications on the laws of visual perception were groundbreaking nationally and internationally. Hummel's artfully constructed, sometimes enigmatic and overly realistic compositions are executed with graphic clarity and a delicately perceived colorism. They point to modernity, such as New Objectivity, which will be represented with selected works.
After the Nationalgalerie honored Johann Erdmann Hummel for the first time with a retrospective in 1924, the Alte Nationalgalerie is now, around 100 years later, dedicating a long-overdue exhibition to the artist, who, despite his importance, has been little noticed and barely published to this day.