The Orangerie and the Otto Dix House
| Art museums | The Orangerie and the Otto Dix House |
| Country | Germany |
| State | |
| City | Gera |
| Location | Orangery
Küchengartenallee 4 07548 Gera Otto Dix House Mohrenplatz 4 07548 Gera |
| About the Museum | Gera’s Orangery is a late Baroque structure with two wings located in the former kitchen gardens of the estate of the younger line of the princely Reuß family. The orangery and greenhouse was designed by the Saxon state builder to the monarchy Gottfried Heinrich Krohne and built in the years 1729-1732 and 1748/49. Over the course of a tumultuous history, it served as military hospital, a horse barn, a gymnasium and a restaurant, and finally housed the Gera Art Association. The Orangery has been the home of the Gera Art Collection since 1972.
The two side wings and two ballrooms located in the center part of the building provide just under 1,000 square meters of space for the newly designed exhibition “From Cranach to Dix” and for an ambitious program of special exhibits. |
| Museum Collections | The foundation of the Gera Art Collection is a mid-sized inventory of paintings, graphic prints, drawings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the present day. It comprises just under 11,000 objects. Highlights of the collection are exhibited in the recently renovated North wing of the Orangery.
Under the name “From Cranach to Dix,” we have create unique constellations of known and lesser-known works and artists, with pictures from various centuries, generations and worldviews. We have placed Alexander Wolfgang next to Hans Thoma, combined Barbara Toch with Karl Weschke, set 19th century works from Gera together with scenes from the famous Munich and Dresden schools of painting, and created encounters between Joseph Beuys and Horst Sakulowski and Rainer Schumacher. In short, the exhibition demonstrates the uniqueness of a specific region in connection with the larger world of art history. The graphics collection includes works from Dürer’s time to the present day. One extraordinary group of works is titled “Sketches from the GDR” and comprises just under 2,000 works. In the studio space at Otto Dix House, you have the opportunity of receiving expert instruction in producing your own works on paper. The Gera Art Collection houses 400 paintings and works on paper by Otto Dix. They include major works spanning the artist’s creative life, from a pupil’s Impressionist beginnings in the Thuringian landscape to the last self-portrait, with his niece Marcella, created in 1969, the year of his death. Otto Dix House shows both highlights of its own collections and high-quality works on loan from the Otto Dix Foundation in Vaduz. The graphics collections includes sketchbooks from Dix’s youth, watercolors and drawings from the 1920’s and 1930’s as well as the war cycle masterpiece (50 etchings) and later color lithographs. The works also include a unique collection of 48 military postcards containing sketches from the First World War. The Gera Dix collection offers an overview of Dix’s varied body of work that illustrates both overall characteristics and specific tendencies. A catalogue of the collection provides extensive commentary. |
| Web site | http://www.kunstsammlung-gera.de/ |
Related Posts
