Travels in the modern art of Berlin

Tuesday April 5 Berlin
Today the museums are all open it is going to be a big day. I got away 20 minutes behind schedule and was off on the S ban for Hackescher Market station. My plan to go straight to the main Alte National Gallery and I finished up spending more than 3 hours covering all the floors. It was another excellent gallery. I went straight to the impressionists on floor 2. It was an excellent showing of many paintings which I was not familiar. An excellent Manet and Renoir. German painters of personal note were Carl Spitzweg and Max Liebermann. See following notes (if I get time).

I now had to revise my plan to go to the Bauhaus for the afternoon so plan B was the museums in Challotteburg. They were all in the same street and I would be able to do them efficiently.

Back on the S ban to Charlottenburg then changed to Richard-Wagner place. A short walk and I was at the museums. The first was the Brohan museum which was featuring Art Nouveau art, furniture, porcelain & beware. I'm trying to extend my appreciation of modernism. The wooden furniture by Ruhlmann & Enduring van de Else were very good and so was the porcelain and steel tableware. I found the painting very good. I will have to research the artist: Jean Lurcat, Mart Hagemeister, Emile Claus, Theo van Rysselberghe, Leon de Smet, George Lemmen, Xavier Mellery, Maris Slavona & Willy Jackel. Their degree of abstraction is about where I would like to be in my work.

The next museum was The Berggruen museum. This had been a private collection of Picasso, Martese, and Klee. Found it very interesting and it extended my knowledge of their philosophies.

Across the road was the third museum Scarf Gerstenberg. and that was concerned with the surrealist. Salvidor Dali, Klee, Max Ernst featured. I'm always interested in surrealism but it is not my main interest.

They kicked me me out at 6pm and I walked down to the shopping centre at bought a meal - a huge pork knuckle, potatoes, sourcrout and purayed brocelle. It was far too much. At 10:30 euros it was excellent value. By the time I finished the meal it was dark and I made my way back across the city on the metro to the hostel.