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<\/p>\nIn the decades before the First World War, Munich was celebrated for its so-called \u201cpainter princes\u201d\u2014a tiny group of top-tier artists who set themselves up in grand mansions, turning out wildly popular salon paintings, mythological scenes and portraits of other A-listers. The last of these great artist-aristocrats was Franz\u00a0von Stuck, one of Europe\u2019s most important Symbolist painters, who was also a sculptor, an architect and a designer. His Gesamtkunstwerk was his own home, the Villa Stuck, an extravagant, if eccentric, showplace, built in two stages between 1897 and 1915. On 18 October, the museum reopens after a \u20ac13.5m renovation.<\/p>\n
Damaged\u00a0in the Second World War, then\u00a0donated to\u00a0the city of Munich, before being turned into a museum in the early 1990s, the Museum Villa Stuck has a dual purpose: to present\u00a0Stuck\u2019s manifold talents\u00a0and to mount special exhibitions, including work by cutting-edge contemporary artists. Both aspects of the remit have been rethought as part of the\u00a0year-and-a-half-long redevelopment.<\/p>\n
A main goal of the project was to update and upgrade the\u00a0building\u2019s infrastructure, including its security system,\u00a0and this has coincided with the restoration of the facade and a renewal of the museum\u2019s historical rooms.\u00a0The adjoining music and reception salons\u00a0boast, as they did before, sumptuous decorative features,\u00a0including elaborate flooring\u00a0and Pompeii-inspired wall paintings by Stuck. But thanks to the conservation of art and objects, and the dramatic inclusion of new silk curtains that serve as a room divider, the overall effect is much brighter and more dramatic. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An installation view of Villa Stuck\u2019s rehang, showing Franz von Stuck\u2019s The Guardian of Paradise (1889)<\/p>\n
Photo: Jann Averwerser<\/p>\n
The\u00a0new\u00a0vermillion-red\u00a0colour of these curtains plays off several other elements in the salons, including the\u00a0restored\u00a0Italian Baroque painting hanging\u00a0nearby, says Margot Th. Brandlhuber, the museum\u2019s head of collections.<\/p>\n
The museum\u2019s display of\u00a0Stuck\u2019s paintings has also been reconfigured, with fresh exhibits including a recently\u00a0donated\u00a0work,\u00a0Portrait of a Woman from Mainz (1914).\u00a0It still has its original artist-designed frame, whose swirling relief seems to suggest loose brushstrokes. In addition, the museum has taken the opportunity to increase the total number of Stuck paintings on view. <\/p>\n
Stuck, who came from humble Bavarian origins\u2014the noble \u201cvon\u201d added when he was in his 40s\u2014first made his name as a\u00a0graphic artist. When he was still in his 20s, he began earning large sums\u00a0for mythological\u00a0and religious paintings\u00a0that\u00a0German art publishers were able to reproduce and sell in various formats, including black-and-white prints. The artist\u00a0\u201chad a strong instinct for marketing\u201d, says Brandlhuber.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
An installation view of Franz von Stuck\u2019s The Vision of Saint Hubertus (1890)<\/p>\n
Photo: Jann Averwerser<\/p>\n
Stuck\u00a0is now best-remembered for co-founding, in 1892, the Munich Secession\u201a an association that helped usher in a generation of avant-garde art throughout Central Europe\u2014and for the painting The Sin, a masterpiece of the Symbolist movement, depicting a swooning Eve and a demonic Serpent enveloping her. The motif dates to the early 1890s but came to exist in several versions. The Villa Stuck\u2019s piece, created\u00a0before 1906, is enshrined in a marble altar, designed by the artist\u2014which has been conserved as part of the restoration. A collection of sculptures from antiquity and by Stuck surround the painting.<\/p>\n
The villa will reopen with a contemporary art exhibition: A Song of Ascents is the first museum show\u00a0dedicated to the work of the young\u00a0Manchester-based artist Louise Giovanelli.\u00a0The exhibition, first held earlier this year at the UK\u2019s Hepworth Wakefield, makes\u00a0use of the villa\u2019s refurbished historic spaces, including the room housing the Sin altar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the decades before the First World War, Munich was celebrated for its so-called \u201cpainter princes\u201d\u2014a tiny group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,10345,29323,90514,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-210177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-museums-heritage","tag-openings","tag-symbolism","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}