MUNICH.- The collectors Walter and Brigitte Kames are handing over their collection containing over 3000 lithographs by Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) to the ‘Collective Foundation of Bavarian State Museums’. The Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, which already has some 700 lithographs and woodcuts by the artist, is then likely to preside over more prints by Daumier than any other museum in Germany . The quality of this collection stems not merely from its scope and the good condition of the sheets. What makes this donation so especially valuable is the fact that the lithographs include numerous series in their entirety, whereby Daumier pursued a subject over several sheets.

An extensive exhibition of the collection will be held from 1.12.2012 to 24.2.2013 at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München in the Pinakothek der Moderne.

The ‘Collective Foundation of Bavarian State Museums’ was established in 1993 to provide individuals with the opportunity to transfer important artworks from private collections to state ones in the form of donations, endowments and estates. The foundation also supports the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, as well as the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, by offering them the artworks it receives as permanent loans.

The first and as yet largest work on paper to have been received this way is the monumental woodcut Ways of Worldly Wisdom by Anselm Kiefer (*1945). Further donations to the SGSM’s collection have come in the form of important individual sheets, including ones by Henri Laurens (1885–1954) and Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749) – as well as larger groups of works, comprising drawings by Alfred Kremer (1885–1965) and Peter Anton Verschaffelt (1710–1793), and by the Simplicissimus illustrators, Karl Arnold (1883–1953, from his own estate) and Erich Schilling (1885–1945, from the collection of Molly and Walter Bareiss).