{"id":163297,"date":"2025-06-06T15:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T15:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163297\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T15:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T15:43:09","slug":"ernst-ludwig-kirchner-painting-thought-to-be-lost-for-decades-goes-on-display-in-basel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163297\/","title":{"rendered":"Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painting thought to be lost for decades goes on display in Basel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A painting by the German Expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was thought to have been lost for decades has gone on display at the Kunstmuseum Basel, more than 100 years after it was last exhibited.<\/p>\n

Tanz im Variet\u00e9 (Dance at the Variet\u00e9, 1911) was restored at the museum over a number of months, and has now been added to the museum\u2019s Paarlauf (Pairings) exhibition. It is expected to remain on display until July 2027.<\/p>\n

Previously only known through photographs taken by Kirchner, Tanz im Variet\u00e9 unexpectedly came up for auction last year at Ketterer Kunst in Munich and was purchased by the Swiss-based Im Obersteg Foundation for around \u20ac7m. The foundation\u2019s collection\u2014drawn from the acquisitions of the Swiss father and son collectors Karl and J\u00fcrg Im Obersteg\u2014is on permanent loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel.<\/p>\n

The oil painting, which depicts a group of people performing the cakewalk\u2014a dance that originated<\/a> among African American slaves in the 19th century\u2014is last thought to have been exhibited in Berlin in 1923. <\/p>\n

G\u00e9raldine Meyer, the curator of the Im Obersteg collection, explains that \u201cafter that, black-and-white photographs taken by Kirchner still existed but the public did not know where the work was. Only now, with the family having brought the work to the auction house in Munich, has it been possible to trace the entire provenance history of this work.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Ketterer Kunst\u2019s catalogue notes, the painting was purchased by the German collector Max Glaeser around 1930, and remained part of his estate until 1944\u2014a period within which Kirchner\u2019s art was declared \u201cdegenerate\u201d by the Nazis.<\/p>\n

In 1944, the work was purchased by a Munich-based collector and moved to the countryside of the neighbouring German state of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg for safekeeping. It was, however, discovered a year later in a crate by French soldiers who are said to have damaged it, with the painting struck by a bullet and pierced by a bayonet. The soldiers left the crate and painting behind, and the work remained in the same family ownership until its recent sale.<\/p>\n

After the Second World War, the painting was restored at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, in southwestern Germany, with evidence of the historical damage now only visible on the rear of the canvas. <\/p>\n

The two main tasks for restorers at the Kunstmuseum Basel involved stabilising the paint layer and cleaning the surface, guided by a digital reconstruction of the work.<\/p>\n

Meyer describes Tanz im Variet\u00e9 as \u201ca major painting from Kirchner\u2019s Dresden period, capturing the dynamic atmosphere of modern urban nightlife\u201d. She adds that \u201cthe acquisition of this painting is particularly significant, as it fills a long-standing gap in the collection and reflects the historical relationship between Kirchner and the foundation\u2019s founder, Karl Im Obersteg, who actively promoted the artist but never acquired one of his works himself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A painting by the German Expressionist artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was thought to have been lost for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,8334,77,68587,4845,42312,56737,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-163297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-discoveries","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ernst-ludwig-kirchner","14":"tag-exhibitions","15":"tag-expressionism","16":"tag-restoration","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114637190183494135","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}