FRANKFURT, GERMANY.-Thanks to the exceptional quality of its 25,000 drawings and 75,000 graphic works from the late Middle Ages to the present, the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings numbers among the most important collections of its kind in Germany. It was founded by Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816) in the 18th century and extended and developed by personalities like Johann David Passavant (1787–1861), Georg Swarzenski (1876–1957), and others in the 19th and 20th centuries. For conservatory reasons, works on paper cannot be permanently exhibited like paintings but are made available to visitors on request in the Study Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings. Comprising 80 extraordinary drawings, the present exhibition of masterworks offers an exemplary survey of the collection’s range and quality. The selected works span a period of almost 600 years: the oldest exhibits date from the early 15th century, the most recent works from the late 20th century. Nearly all prominent draftsmen of art history are represented, among them Dürer, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Fragonard, Tiepolo, Cornelius, Delacroix, Daumier, Cézanne, van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Kirchner, Beckmann, Klee, Pollock.

The exhibition conveys a manifold impression of the characteristics and the specific immediateness and personal quality of drawing. Not only the artist’s skills, but also his penchants, spontaneous ideas, and, to a certain degree, his inner nature leave their marks – marks which are not covered and adapted by the application of layers as they are in painting. There is no other medium that permits such a close encounter with the artist. Visitors will be able to follow, for example, how practicing drawing and elaborating and drafting something, how “thinking on paper,” became a constant exercise for the artist in Renaissance times; how drawing, in accordance with the interest in inner and outer movements gained in speed and openness in the Baroque era; how the Nazarene quest for simplicity could turn plain pen or pen-and-ink drawings into treasures in the Romantic period; how drawing, with the progressive shift of interest from naturalist representation to media structure, became increasingly autonomous, which manifested itself in technical experiments, in independent structures, and in the fusion of traditional categories of visual presentation.

Johann Friedrich Städel, the founder of the museum, already collected drawings and graphic works besides paintings on a large scale. He aimed at giving an exemplary overview of the development in fine arts since the late Middle Ages and, as a carefully calculating businessman, was certainly aware of the fact that he would not be able to do so with paintings alone considering their high prices. Actually, his works on paper finally proved to be the more significant part of his collection. After Städel’s death, many of his paintings were sorted out as of insufficient quality, while nearly all his drawings and graphic works were preserved. As early as 1817, the collection of the Frankfurt jurist Johann Georg Grambs (1756–1817) was added to them. A first inventory of the collections drawn up around 1825 lists approximately 4,000 drawings and 28,000 graphic works as the holdings constitutive for the Department of Prints and Drawings. The drawings purchased by Johann Friedrich Städel already evince a distinct feeling for quality. Examples that may be mentioned in this context are such marvelous works as Antony van Dyck’s portrait of the architecture painter Hendrick van Steenwijck, Bronzino’s “ceiling design” for the Grand Duchess of Tuscany’s private chapel in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Rubens’s brilliant chalk study for the “Garden of Love,” or one of Rembrandt’s few drawings personally signed by the artist, “The Drunken Lot,” dating from around 1630. Johann Friedrich Städel also established the tradition to collect not only old masters but also contemporary works.

In the 19th century, Johann Friedrich Städel’s ideas were mainly taken up by Johann David Passavant, a painter and member of the Romantic school of the Nazarenes, who sought inspiration in the work of German and Italian Renaissance artists. From 1840 until his death in 1861, Passavant, as inspector of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, molded both the Gallery of Paintings and the Department of Prints and Drawings with great understanding and expertise so that nearly all important artists and periods of European art history were represented in a well-balanced form and excellent examples. It was then that the hitherto underestimated early Netherlandish painting made its arrival at the Städel along with equivalent drawings such as Petrus Christus’ “Portrait of a Man with a Falcon.” This also holds true for Dürer’s witty pen-and-ink drawing “Nürnberg and Venetian Woman,” Pontormo’s men looking into a mirror, or Correggio’s ceiling design. A group of outstanding drawings by Raphael is still of the collection’s most valuable treasures. The contemporary works acquired in those years include two valuable lots of Nazarene art by Franz Pforr and Karl Philipp Fohr.

In the 20th century, the collection was further developed by acquisitions of French art from the late 19th century. Works such as Claude Monet’s rare pastel and Vincent van Gogh’s early drawing were added to the collection. Subsequently, the interest increasingly focused on French and German classical modern art. The close friendship between Georg Swarzenski, Director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut from 1906 to 1938, and Max Beckmann (1884–1950) manifested itself in significant purchases. Yet, the collection of modern art built up continuously until 1937, would get lost. The holdings were completely destroyed by the Nazi “Degenerate Art Initiative” (Aktion Entartete Kunst), to which 80 paintings and almost 600 drawings and graphic works fell victim. After World War II, the Städel succeeded in adding part of what had been lost to its collection again, especially in the field of Expressionist art. With the donation of the Hagemann Collection, the Department of Prints and Drawings actually became one of the foremost locations for German Expressionist art, particularly for the Brücke artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Emil Nolde. Acquisitions from the collection of Fridel and Ugi Battenberg since the early 1950s reflect the endeavor to compensate the loss of Max Beckmann’s work. Since the 1970s, Margret Stuffmann, Director of the Department of Prints and Drawings from 1974 to 2001, picking up the thread of Swarzenski’s earlier purchases, built up a high-quality collection of French 19th-century art. This is why the Städel is now able to sketch the development from the French Romantics, like Eugène Delacroix, the Barbizon School, and the draftsmen of the second half of the century, such as Honoré Daumier and Paul Cézanne, to classical modern art, to Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse. At the same time, the Städel strove to illustrate the development of art from the 1940s on with exemplary works of international artists and to continuously extend its collection in this area. Thus, striking affinities between more or less contemporary, yet most diverse orientations emerge, e.g. between Paul Klee and Henri Matisse, Max Beckmann and Wols, Antoni Tàpies and Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet and Sam Francis. The figurative and the abstract are equally represented in the collection. As Richard Serra’s “Taraval Beach” documents, the Städel has also shown a special interest in drawings and graphic works by sculptors.