Vienna.- The Kunsthistorisches Museum is proud to present “Winter Tales: Depictions of Winter in European Art from Bruegel to Beuys”, on view through January 8th 2012. The creation myths of most great civilizations agree that winter came into the world to punish man, or as a plague. Boreas, the Greek god of the cold north wind, personified winter. In northern mythology three years of frost herald the end of the world. Large-scale depictions of how Napoleon’s Grande Armée was defeated by the Russian winter are a modern equivalent of these ancient scenarios of the end of the world. The contrary vision comprises serenity and joyous seasonal cheer: we can feast our eyes on views of a snow-bound countryside with skaters enjoying themselves on frozen ponds and rivers in the distance. In the middle of the 16th century, northern Europe – especially Flanders – witnessed the birth of the “pure” winter landscape.
For the first time these scenes are intended to stand alone and are not conceived as part of the Labours of the Months. It is probably no accident that this period was known as the “Little Ice Age”, which was marked by exceptionally low median temperatures. In the late 18th century, there is a revival of by then long-unfashionable winter landscapes: at first romanticized, they evolve to reflect the palette of winter. The exhibition is on display until January 8th, 2012.
Impressionism, Dutch art and a wealth of landscapes – these were the ingredients of earlier winter exhibitions. The Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Kunsthaus Zurich have expanded this successful trio. Broadening the selection to include many different genres and schools, the two museums present a comprehensive survey comprising over 180 works by west-European artists. For the show’s curator, Ronald de Leeuw, a personal winter tale has come true. Four galleries and nine small rooms of the KHM’s Picture Gallery form the show’s spectacular setting: The works on show date from 1450 to the present. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, there are Dutch allegories of the months, depictions of winter festivities and folk customs, and still lifes; even portraits join in and present changing winter fashions. Light-hearted and harmless winter amusements or the life-threatening forces of nature – both scenarios exist.
Finding something magical in inhospitable nature was the preserve of a small elite: warm and well-fed, they were able to enjoy various seasonal amusements. Ice skating, a popular sport for gallant lovers, parties, travelling, freezing animals, peasants and beggars, the cold, poverty and old age proved popular subjects for many centuries. In the 21st century, large blockbuster exhibitions are subject to organizational and economic limitations and constraints – which means we had to reject an attractive group of works: there are almost no winter paintings by artists from Russia and Scandinavia, or from America, and no Japanese woodcuts. The paintings are arranged more or less in chronological order; Ronald de Leeuw was able to augment the selection by including large-scale tapestries and an imperial sleigh as well as cups and goblets, fragile porcelain figures and vessels cut from semi-precious stones.
Over thirty important museums, among them the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery and the Tate in London, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, and our partner the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have lent outstanding works. Three years in the making, the exhibition also brings together important loans from Munich, Strasbourg, Rotterdam, Dresden, Zurich, Philadelphia, Darmstadt, Edinburgh, Cologne, The Hague, New York, Gent, Weimar and Boston. However, the unique focal point of the exhibition in Vienna is in the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum: Pieter Bruegel the elder’s painting “Hunters in the Snow”, perhaps the most famous depiction of winter in European art. But the exhibition also includes paintings by Jacob van Ruisdael, Hendrick Avercamp, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Steen, Jacob Jordaens, J M W Turner, Francisco de Goya, Caspar David Friedrich, Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh, Giovanni Segantini, Edvard Munch, Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is one of the foremost museums in the world, with rich holdings comprising artworks from seven millennia – from Ancient Egypt to the late 18th century. The collections of Renaissance and Baroque art are of particular importance. The KHM’s extensive holdings are on show at different locations: The main building on Ringstrasse houses the Picture Gallery, the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection, the Coin Collection, and the Kunstkammer that will reopen in December 2012. Other collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum are housed in the Neue Burg (i.e. the Collection of Historical Musical Instruments, the Collection of Arms and Armour, and the Ephesus Museum), in Hofburg Palace (the Treasury), and in Schönbrunn Palace (the Collection of Historical Carriages). The collections on show at Ambras Palace are also part of the holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Since January 2001, the Museum of Ethnology on Heldenplatz and the Austrian Theatre Museum on Lobkowitz Square have been incorporated into the KHM. The Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum developed from the art collections of the House of Habsburg. Today it is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world. The foundations of the collection were laid and its main emphases set in the 17th century: 16th-century Venetian painting (Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto), 17th-century Flemish painting (Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony Van Dyck), Early Netherlandish painting (Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden) and German Renaissance painting (Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach). Among the other highlights in the Picture Gallery are its holdings of pictures by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which are unique worldwide, as well as masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Raphael, Caravaggio, Velázquez and Italian Baroque painters. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.khm.at