Museo Nacional Thyssen‐Bornemisza features German Expressionist paintings
George Grosz, Metrópolis, 1916-1917 (detail). Oil on canvas, 100 x 102 cm. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
MADRID
.- When in 1961 Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen‐Bornemisza acquired Young Couple by Emil Nolde he initiated a change of direction in the Thyssen familys collecting activities. While his father Henrich Thyssen had assembled a remarkable collection of Old Masters during the interwar period, between the 1960s and 1990s Hans Heinrich would be extremely active as a collector of the principal 20th‐century art movements, among which German Expressionism would occupy a pre‐eminent place.
In 1993 the Spanish State acquired most of the Thyssen collection and the Museo Nacional Thyssen‐Bornemisza thus came to house a significant representation of German Expressionism, a movement barely represented in Spanish collections. For the first time in decades the present exhibition, German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen‐Bornemisza Collection, reunites those works with the group of Expressionist paintings that remained with his wife, Carmen Thyssen‐Bornemisza, and his children. In addition, it offers a new perspective on the paintings through a presentation that departs from their habitual chronological display in the galleries.