MUNICH.- The Bavarian State Painting Collections are world renowned. Year after year thousands of visitors from all around the globe flock to the Pinakothek Museums in Munich. But few know that the exquisite holdings of this unique collection spread way beyond the city boundaries. Now, for the first time, a new and attractive publication provides a guide to all 19 galleries of the State Painting Collections throughout Bavaria. With the help of this conveniently sized guidebook, tourists as well as local residents, art connoisseurs and students can explore not just the iconic works in the Pinakothek Museums in Munich but also the treasures in the Pinakothek’s branch galleries all over Bavaria. Richly illustrated and complemented by a photo series of individual perspectives taken by the artist Martin Fengel, the publication aims at inspiring and animating the reader to explore the Pinakothek Museums’ 19 locations in Bavaria.
Nicolas Poussin resides in the electoral Schloss Schleissheim, Hans Holbein in Augsburg’s Katharinenkirche, Jörg Immendorf and the ‘Junge Wilde’ from the ’80s, at present, in the Glaspalast in Augsburg and Peter Paul Rubens in Neuburg an der Donau. In addition to the artworks the buildings that house the galleries – old castles and magnificent palaces – inspire to visit too. From medieval altarpieces to media installations, from Albrecht Dürer to Andy Warhol and from Ansbach to Würzburg: in its 180 pages this enticing ‘art’ guide describes the history of the collection, its origins and today’s highlights. The history paintings that form its basis, commissioned by Duke Wilhelm from 1528 onwards, continue to fascinate to this day as proven by Albrecht Altdorfer’s famous ‘Battle of Issus’. The holdings in Munich did not expand merely as a result of systematic collecting by princes and kings but also through inheritance. Collections with a rich tradition from Mannheim, Zweibrücken and Düsseldorf were transferred to the Bavarian line of the Wittelsbachers in 1777. In addition, the dissolution of convents and monasteries after 1803 led to a further increase in the number of paintings in the rich Wittelsbacher collections. The ‘Central Directorate of Picture Galleries’ founded in 1799 soon distributed several groups of paintings to Ansbach, Augsburg, Bamberg, Nuremberg and Würzburg, thus establishing the basis for the Pinakothek Museums’ branch galleries throughout the whole of Bavaria.
The significance and attractivity of these additional Bavarian art galleries is explained to the reader in this compact guidebook by the curators in charge of each respective State Gallery. Impressive masterpieces by Arcimboldo to Zanetti, presented in beautiful galleries, palaces and castles, are not just a magnet for visitors on city tours. The Munich-based photographic artist Martin Fengel started his trip to the Pinakothek Museums in Bavaria in the summer and described this journey in a blog (
The Pinakothek Museums in Bavaria
HIRMER Verlag
Edited by Bernhard Maaz
Contributions by A. Bambi, P. Dander, B. Ebert, N. Engel, I. Graeve-Ingelmann, E. Hipp, J. Kaak, O. Kase, M. Neumeister, H. Rott, M. Schawe, B. Schwenk, A. Schumacher, C. Thierolf. With a photo essay by Martin Fengel, 180 pages, c. 112 illustrations in colour, 21 × 15 cm, softcover with flaps, 12.90 euros (D), 978-3-7774-2534-4
