As of: February 2, 2024 11:16 a.m
On the north bank of the Maschsee in Hanover lies a temple of art – the Sprengel Museum. It is considered one of the most important centers of modern art in Germany and enjoys international reputation.
In the world, the Sprengel Museum offers the largest collections of Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters, the second largest Paul Klee collection and at least 400 works by Pablo Picasso. In total, the collection includes more than 40,000 works.
Current artists represented
Art after 1960 is also extensively represented, including Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz. A special exhibition is dedicated to the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who donated a large part of her works to the city of Hanover and the Sprengel Museum in 2000.
Works by Marc, Macke and Nolde
The “Classic Modern” can be seen on the lowest floor. Masterpieces from art history by Kandinsky and Franz Marc hang here, as do August Macke and the color artist Emil Nolde. The pictures are a delight not only for art connoisseurs.
Impressions of the big city and new stimuli
The large oil painting “La Strada entra nella casa” is one of the most spectacular works in the exhibition.
Remarkable and one of the most valuable treasures in the collection is Umberto Boccioni’s masterpiece, “Noise from the Street Penetrates the House” from 1911, a key work of Italian Futurism. At this time, artists tried for the first time to capture everything in the picture at the same time: the noise of the big city and the overstimulation of sensory impressions. Time, place, form, color and tone converge simultaneously in just a single image. In Boccioni’s work there is a woman’s ear in the center of the picture, through which the noise of the big city penetrates. The so-called visual languages were an indispensable means of expression in classical modernism.
First walk-in collage in art history
Schwitters’ “Merzbau” can be experienced as a replica in the Sprengel Museum.
The artist Kurt Schwitters, a son of the city of Hanover, also found his own form of expression and thus had a lasting influence on the art scene. With his “Merzbau”, the first walk-in collage in art history, he undermined all conventional perspectives: Schwitters questioned the usual architecture and caused people to see everything with different eyes. Instead of a room with four smooth walls, he built an imaginatively angled room with niches, corners, edges and mirrors to keep the spirit alive. The original was destroyed in Schwitter’s house in Hanover during the Second World War, and the museum is showing a replica.
Many visitors are amazed at Schwitters’ studio and ask the question: Why do rooms always look so boring?
More space in the extension building
The Calder Hall combines the old and new buildings and also serves as an event room.
The Sprengel Museum also had to answer the question of what rooms should look like for itself: Since 2015, it has had a 75 meter long and 14 meter high extension building, which increases the exhibition area by 1,400 to around 6,650 square meters. The old and new parts of the building are connected by a two-story hall with a large spiral ramp, which becomes a staircase in the lower part. Visitors can look out onto the neighboring Maschsee from the glazed loggias of the otherwise windowless new building.
Debate about the facade
Controversial museum architecture: Not everyone likes the dark facade of the extension.
The dark concrete facade led to heated discussions in Hanover about the external design of the extension. It visually contrasts with the white shell of the old museum building, which opened in 1979. The extension was designed by the Zurich architectural firm “Meili + Peter”. It was originally supposed to cost around 28.5 million euros, but in the end it was more than 35 million.
In 2017, the German section of the International Art Critics Association AICA named the Sprengel Museum “Museum of the Year”.
Telephone tours “Culture on call”
The house offers guided tours by telephone for people with limited mobility and blind people. The acoustic tour “Culture on Call” allows you to visit the museum from home. Professional guides accompany you through art collections and make the works come alive. The offer was developed by the Hamburg Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired during the Corona pandemic and has now become established nationwide.
The Sprengel Museum Hanover is Cultural partner from NDR Culture.
Sprengel Museum Hanover
Kurt Schwitters Square
30169 Hannover
Tel. (0511) 168 438 75
Opening hours and further information on the museum website
Map: The Sprengel Museum is located here
Further information
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Northern Tour: Experience the North | 02/03/2024 | 6:00 p.m