VIENNA.- Masterpieces by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl from the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm are on display as of now at the Leopold Museum, complementing the permanent presentation Vienna 1900 as “noble guests”. The Sammlung Kamm is located in Zug, the capital of the eponymous Swiss canton, where the foundation has placed its works at the disposal of the Kunsthaus Zug as permanent loans.
Artdaily Recommended · Paid Link
Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings
By Tobias G. Natter
A lavish TASCHEN volume exploring Klimt’s paintings, decorative brilliance, portraits, landscapes, and lasting influence on modern art.
See it on Amazon → As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Among the works newly presented at the Leopold Museum in Vienna are two important landscapes by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) – the 1913 painting Italian Garden Landscape and the 1916 depiction Garden Landscape with with HIlltop (Parish Garden) – which are displayed in the large Klimt room on level 4 of the museum. The rooms dedicated to Richard Gerstl (1883–1908) on level 3 will now house one of Gerstl’s main works – the Group Portrait with Schönberg, created in 1908, the last year of the radical early Expressionist’s life. The fourth of the loans, which can be seen at the Leopold Museum until 4 October, is an early masterwork by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele (1890–1918): The 1909 work Portrait of the Painter Hans Massmann is testament to the initial influences Schiele derived from Klimt.
“We would like to thank the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm for these high-quality loans which are an expression of the longstanding, close cooperation between our two foundations. With the two loans from the Sammlung Kamm, the Leopold Museum is currently in the fortunate position of being able to display 22 eminent works by Gustav Klimt and to thus showcase one of the world’s largest permanent presentations of Klimt paintings. The museum is further home to the most extensive Egon Schiele collection in the world, as well as to the most comprehensive permanent presentations of works by the Expressionists Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl.” Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum
The Stiftung Sammlung Kamm was founded in 1998 – four years after the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung. It is home to the largest art collection on Viennese Modernism in Europe outside of Austria. The Stiftung Kamm was set up by the descendants of the collectors Fritz and his Vienna-born wife Editha Kamm-Ehrbar: Christa Kamm and her brother Peter Kamm, along with his wife Christine Kamm-Kyburz. As the collection features the second largest compilation of works by Gerstl after that of the Leopold Museum, the Sammlung Kamm was an essential lender to the large-scale Richard Gerstl exhibition, Richard Gerstl. Inspiration – Legacy, shown at the Leopold Museum in 2019, while the Kunsthaus Zug acted as the presentation’s cooperation partner. The Stiftung Sammlung Kamm presently includes more than 400 objects, among them works by Gustav Klimt, Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Herbert Boeckl, Josef Hoffman and Fritz Wotruba, as well as examples of European avant-garde art.
The Kamms were inspired to compile an art collection by the eminent Austrian sculptor Fritz Wotruba who, during World War II, had been forced to flee from the National Socialist regime with his Jewish wife, finding refuge in Switzerland. On Wotruba’s advice, Fritz Kamm acquired Lea Bondi-Jaray’s Viennese Galerie Würthle in 1953, with Wotruba running the art gallery until 1964. In 1967, the collector and later founder of the Leopold Museum, Rudolf Leopold, first entered into contact with the Kamm family owing to his interest in the works of Richard Gerstl. From the early 1970s until well into the 1990s, Peter Kamm and Rudolf Leopold engaged in an animated and friendly exchange. Their decision to also swap paintings contributed to the complementation of both collections in the area of Viennese Modernism.
