Enfilade

From the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden:

Timeless Beauty: A History of Still Life / Zeitlose Schönheit: Eine Geschichte des Stilllebens
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 17 November 2023 — 1 September 2024

Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Floral Still Life, 1690, oil on canvas on oak panel, 35 × 27 cm (Dresden: Museum Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, 3149).

In the Winckelmann Forum of the Semper Building, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister presents around 80 works from its own collection in the exhibition Timeless Beauty: A History of Still Life. The wide-ranging presentation—with masterpieces by painters such as Frans Snyders, Balthasar van der Ast, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Adriaen van Utrecht, Willem Claesz. Heda, Abraham Mignon, and Rachel Ruysch—comprehensively illuminates the genre ‘still life’. Since when has it existed? What exactly constitutes a still life? What meaning, what content and what function did they have and still have today? What allegories and symbols are hidden in these motifs?

Still lifes were not only showpieces of decorative room furnishings, in which the overall effect was in the foreground. They also bear witness to natural scientific interests: the depicted object is regarded as a scientifically object and ‘document’—today as in the Age of Enlightenment. At the same time, however, still lifes are also an illusion, a game with the eye (trompe-l’œuil), in which the optical effect of the entire motif takes center stage. Through the bravura of painting, the ephemeral is immortalized. Many of the works on display, some of them recently restored, allow visitors to rediscover this fascinating genre, as only a few of the more than 100 still lifes in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister are on permanent display.

Konstanze Krüger, ed., Stillleben: Zeitlose Schönheit (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2023), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-3775751131, $50.
Konstanze Krüger, ed., Still Life: Timeless Beauty (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2024), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-3775751148, $40.