MANNHEIM.- “The Cardplayers” by Paul Cézanne (1892/95) has been flown in from London, “The Dead Toreador” (probably 1864), a main work by Édouard Manet, arrived from Washington. Key pieces from outstanding museums in the United States and Europe encounter the high-quality collection of late 19th-century, modern French art of Kunsthalle Mannheim. A dialogue between masterpieces begins in the lavishly refurbished Jugendstil building. For the first time, the museum in Mannheim places the focus on its most valuable art treasures and enables the audience to view rare loans from around the world.

Guest curator Dr. Marie-Amélie zu Salm-Salm juxtaposes the works in Mannheim with carefully selected, imposing counterparts from major European and American museums, thus highlighting important artistic innovations of this unique rise to modernism - like the treatment of colour and light, questions of composition, the choice of motifs, and the use of new painting techniques. Key works by Manet, Cézanne and Van Gogh, as well as paintings by Delacroix, Courbet, Corot, Pissarro, Sisley, Monet, and Renoir enter into a fascinating dialogue of styles and motifs. The focus on top class works of French painting allows visitors an intensive encounter with the individual work and its counterpart.

Mirrored by the other, the key works of Mannheim can be newly perceived and taken to one’s heart.

A surprise waits for the visitor at the end of the tour: The view to 20th-century abstraction with pivotal works by Piet Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers, exemplarily reveal the impact of Impressionism on art and artists of the 20th century and their way of dealing with form and colour.

Dr. Marie-Amélie zu Salm-Salm (born in 1973) studied art history, philosophy and ethnology in Paris and Heidelberg and received her doctorate under Prof. Serge Lemoine. She has been a guest curator at the Musée national d'histoire et d'art Luxembourg, the Musée d’Orsay Paris and the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn.