Image dreams.
The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection June 19, 2009 - January 10, 2010
Neue Nationalgalerie

The Nationalgalerie is pleased to present the private collection of the Berlin collector couple Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch in the Neue Nationalgalerie for the first time. For over 30 years, the Pietzsch couple have been collecting works with a focus on surrealism by artists such as René Magritte, André Masson, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux and Yves Tanguy from their best creative periods as well as lesser-known artists from the surrealist environment such as Leonor Fini, Pierre Roy or Kurt Seligman. Top works by Max Ernst and Joan Miró will be at the center of the exhibition. The Pietzsch Collection has works by both artists that cover the most important years of their careers.

During the Second World War, many of the artists emigrated to America and exerted a considerable influence on their colleagues there. The Pietzsch Collection offers a unique opportunity to follow this artistic development, which began in Paris in the 1920s and was continued by the New York School in the 1940s. Early works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman show the roots of the later characteristic forms of their art. Together with works by other New York School artists such as Arshile Gorky, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes and Richard Pousette-Dart, this focus of the Pietzsch Collection also gives the audience an insight into a groundbreaking development in art history that cannot otherwise be seen in the National Gallery .

A powerful, drawn self-portrait of Frida Kahlo, whose works are not represented in any German museum collection, is one of the other highlights of the Pietzsch Collection. Portrait photographs of the artists on display, magazines and publications of the time complement the exhibition.