Munich: where order learned to break

Munich looks like a city that knows exactly where everything should be.

The façades line up, the squares seem designed to last for centuries and the great cultural buildings occupy their place with an almost intimidating confidence. At first glance, it is difficult to imagine it as the setting for an artistic revolution. It seems too orderly for that.

And yet few European cities took part so intensely in the transformation of modern art.

Long before abstraction seemed inevitable, artists arriving from different places gathered here to discuss precisely what they no longer wanted to keep doing. Painting correctly was no longer enough. Neither was copying the world. Colour could exist on its own. A line could stop describing something recognisable. A mountain could be blue, and a horse was under no obligation to resemble the horse standing in front of the painter.

Munich had academies, great collections and an extraordinary artistic tradition.

That was precisely why it was a perfect place to rebel against it.

A city built for looking at art

Munich’s relationship with art began long before modernity.

For centuries, the collections of Bavaria’s rulers accumulated paintings that would eventually form one of Europe’s great artistic ensembles. In the nineteenth century, that ambition also found spectacular architectural form.

When the Alte Pinakothek opened its doors in 1836, the building designed by Leo von Klenze was one of the largest painting museums in the world. The idea was almost monumental: to bring together the great works of the European masters and build around them a place worthy of containing them.

Exterior of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, ca. 1870–1885. Photograph: Georg Böttger. Rijksmuseum / Wikimedia Commons. CC0 / Public Domain.

Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Murillo, Zurbarán and El Greco, among many others, are still there today.

But Munich’s collecting did not end with the Old Masters.

The Neue Pinakothek, founded by King Ludwig I of Bavaria and originally opened in 1853, was conceived to show the contemporary art of its own time. That decision feels surprisingly modern: a city that revered the past was also setting aside a museum for what was still happening.

The historic Neue Pinakothek building, however, is not the one that reached the present day. After being severely destroyed during the Second World War, it was eventually replaced by a new building designed by Alexander von Branca, which opened in 1981.

Art was not decoration.

It was part of the way Munich wanted to understand itself.

When the academy began to feel too small

By the end of the nineteenth century, Munich was one of Europe’s great centres of artistic training. Its Academy of Fine Arts attracted students from many countries, and the city was full of painters, studios, associations and exhibitions.

But when a tradition becomes too powerful, sooner or later someone decides they no longer want to obey it.

The Munich Secession was born in 1892.

A group of artists broke away from the official exhibition structures to defend greater artistic freedom and show works that did not fit comfortably within established criteria. Figures connected with that new scene included Franz von Stuck, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt.

They were not trying to destroy painting.

They wanted to expand what it could be.

The word “Secession” would eventually appear in other European cities too, but Munich was one of the first to turn that rupture into an artistic structure of its own.

It was a sign.

Something was beginning to move beneath all that appearance of stability.

A city full of foreigners

Part of Munich’s artistic energy came precisely from people who had not been born there.

Munich around 1900. Detroit Publishing Company Collection / Library of Congress. Public Domain.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian, Swiss, Austrian and other German artists arrived, drawn by the academy, private schools and the city’s cultural reputation.

Among them was Wassily Kandinsky, born in Moscow, who came to Munich in 1896 to study art. Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, from the Russian Empire, were also part of an international artistic community that turned the city into a place where ideas circulated constantly.

In 1902, Kandinsky began teaching at the Phalanx art school. There he met Gabriele Münter.

For a long time, history placed her too close to him, almost as if she needed his presence to justify her own.

She did not.

Münter had a vision of her own, an extraordinary ability to reduce forms and a way of using colour that would become fundamental to understanding that generation.

And while all this was happening, representational art was slowly beginning to lose the ground beneath its feet.

The moment colour stopped asking permission

In 1909, the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, the New Artists’ Association of Munich, was founded in the city.

Its members included Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky and Werefkin.

The coexistence did not last long.

Differences over how far artistic experimentation could go eventually caused another break. In 1911, Kandinsky and Franz Marc launched the circle that would become known as Der Blaue Reiter —The Blue Rider—.

Wassily Kandinsky, The Blue Rider, 1903. Public Domain.

The name almost seems too perfect for an artistic movement.

But it was never really a rigid group with a closed manifesto and a stable list of members. It was something more flexible: artists linked by conversations, exhibitions, affinities and a shared curiosity about what painting might still become.

Around them appeared Gabriele Münter, August Macke, Paul Klee, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin and other creators.

The first exhibitions connected with Der Blaue Reiter took place in Munich in 1911 and 1912.

And something essential happened there.

Colour no longer had to obey reality.

A landscape could become an emotional construction. Figures could be simplified until they almost became symbols. Music could become a model for painting precisely because it did not need to represent a table, a tree or a face in order to provoke an emotion.

The question was no longer only “what am I seeing?”.

It could also be “what am I feeling?”.

Painting something that did not yet have a name

Kandinsky would move further and further towards abstraction.

Franz Marc turned animals into constructions of colour capable of transmitting an almost spiritual intensity.

Münter simplified landscapes, interiors and portraits until she found a clarity that can seem simple only after you have seen it.

Jawlensky transformed the human face again and again until it approached a kind of icon.

Werefkin, one of the most intellectually powerful figures in that circle, explored scenes charged with tension, colour and psychology.

They were not all looking for exactly the same thing.

That is what makes it interesting.

Der Blaue Reiter did not invent a formula. It opened doors.

Its famous almanac, published in 1912, mixed painting, music, theory and forms of creation from very different cultures and traditions. The intention was to radically expand what could enter a conversation about art.

Munich had become one of the places where modernity was learning to speak.

And it was doing so inside a city that still looked perfectly orderly from the outside.

The gift that changed a museum

Decades later, much of that history would return to Munich in an extraordinary way.

In 1957, when she turned eighty, Gabriele Münter gave the Lenbachhaus more than a thousand works connected with Der Blaue Reiter.

The donation included around ninety oil paintings by Kandinsky, some 330 drawings and watercolours, sketchbooks, prints and paintings on glass, as well as more than twenty-five paintings by Münter herself and works by Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee, Alexej Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin.

It was one of those gestures capable of completely changing the identity of an institution.

The Lenbachhaus became home to the world’s largest collection devoted to Der Blaue Reiter.

Lenbachhaus, Munich. Wikimedia Commons. CC0 / Public Domain.

And something curious happened too.

The city where those artists had argued, experimented, broken associations apart and created new ways of painting ended up becoming the place where much of that process could be seen together again.

Not as a reconstruction.

With the originals.

From Dürer to Warhol in a few streets

One of the strangest things about Munich is the concentration of art.

In the Kunstareal, the museum district, entire centuries seem to have been compressed into a few blocks.

Dürer is in the Alte Pinakothek.

The nineteenth century begins very close by.

A little further on, the Pinakothek der Moderne brings together modern art, design, architecture and works on paper.

And almost next door, Museum Brandhorst carries the journey forward to Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly and numerous figures of contemporary creation.

You do not need to cross half the city to go from the Renaissance to an installation.

Sometimes crossing a street is enough.

The Pinakothek der Moderne, opened in 2002, brings several disciplines together under one roof. Its modern art collection contains more than 20,000 works and ranges from the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century to contemporary creation.

Museum Brandhorst, opened in 2009, added another piece to the ensemble. It holds more than 120 works by Andy Warhol, the largest collection of the artist outside the United States, as well as one of Europe’s most important groups of works by Cy Twombly.

His monumental cycle Lepanto even occupies a room designed specifically for it.

In Munich, collecting art never seems to have been a small hobby.

Order was never quite so orderly

Perhaps the mistake is to imagine tradition and rupture as opposing forces.

Munich demonstrates something different.

The great old collections generated museums. The museums generated schools. The schools attracted artists. The artists began to question what they were being taught. New associations emerged from those discussions. And some of those associations ended up changing the history of art.

The rupture did not appear outside the system.

It grew inside it.

That is why it is so interesting to walk through Munich today and think that in those streets, students copying Old Masters coexisted with artists trying to discover whether a painting could function without representing practically anything.

A city can look conservative and be experimental at the same time.

It can love Rubens and end up producing Kandinsky.

It can build a museum to preserve the past and, a few decades later, another to show what it still does not know will survive.

Munich never had to choose between tradition and modernity.

It learned to live with both.

Munich for art lovers: the definitive guide

There are cities where visiting art means crossing kilometres of public transport.

In Munich, something quite different can happen: you can leave a museum with Rubens, walk for a few minutes and enter another with Warhol.

The concentration of institutions makes the city one of Europe’s most convenient and complete art destinations. But the scene does not end with the great Pinakotheken. There are also private collections, exhibition centres, historic associations and spaces devoted exclusively to contemporary art.

This guide is designed as a permanent reference, not as an agenda of temporary exhibitions.

The major collections

Alte Pinakothek

One of Europe’s great painting galleries. Its collections range from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century and bring you face to face with Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Murillo, Zurbarán and El Greco.

Among its most recognisable works is Dürer’s extraordinary Self-Portrait with Fur-Trimmed Robe, painted in 1500.

More than a collection of masterpieces, the Alte Pinakothek helps explain the starting point from which many later generations decided to break the rules.

Neue Pinakothek

Originally created in 1853, it was one of the first major museums devoted specifically to the contemporary art of its own time.

The historic building did not survive, and the later home designed by Alexander von Branca opened in 1981.

Its collection spans the nineteenth century and contains works by Francisco de Goya, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt and numerous essential artists of Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism.

The building is currently undergoing extensive renovation, and a selection of its major works is temporarily being shown at other institutions of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.

It is worth checking the current situation on its official website before planning a visit.

Pinakothek der Moderne

An enormous institution devoted to much more than painting.

Modern and contemporary art, design, architecture and works on paper coexist under one roof, making it possible to look at the twentieth century through different disciplines.

The Sammlung Moderne Kunst holds more than 20,000 works, from the historic avant-gardes to the present day, with artists including Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Oskar Schlemmer, Georg Baselitz, Dan Flavin and Neo Rauch.

It is probably the place where it is easiest to understand how modernism stopped carefully separating painting, photography, objects, architecture and design.

Museum Brandhorst

Its façade of thousands of coloured ceramic pieces already announces that another stage begins here.

Opened in 2009, the museum is devoted primarily to art from the second half of the twentieth century to the present.

It holds more than 120 works by Andy Warhol, one of the largest concentrations of his work outside the United States, and one of Europe’s most important groups of works by Cy Twombly.

Lepanto, Twombly’s cycle of twelve large paintings, occupies a room created specifically for the work.

Artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ed Ruscha, Louise Lawler, Jacqueline Humphries, Amy Sillman and Albert Oehlen also appear.

The essential place for understanding Munich

Lenbachhaus

If one museum had to be chosen to understand why Munich mattered to artistic modernity, it would probably be this one.

The building began as the residence and studio of the painter Franz von Lenbach, but its present identity is inevitably tied to Der Blaue Reiter.

Thanks to Gabriele Münter’s extraordinary donation in 1957, the museum now holds the world’s largest collection devoted to the group.

Kandinsky, Münter, Franz Marc, August Macke, Paul Klee, Jawlensky and Werefkin are here, among others.

It is not simply a place to see famous paintings.

It is the place where an artistic story that happened in the city comes face to face with itself again.

Contemporary art and major exhibitions

Haus der Kunst

One of Munich’s leading centres for contemporary exhibitions.

It does not have a traditional permanent collection, and its identity depends mainly on major temporary projects, retrospectives, installations, performance, sound and new artistic practices.

It currently defines itself as a global centre particularly dedicated to working with living artists, connecting different generations, disciplines and forms of production.

It is one of the right places to discover what is happening in art after leaving the historical routes of the Pinakotheken.

Kunsthalle München

Located in the heart of the city, the Kunsthalle organises major temporary exhibitions and receives around 350,000 visitors a year.

Its programme is not limited to painting and sculpture. It also works with photography, design, fashion, applied arts and contemporary media, and often builds thematic exhibitions in which different disciplines meet.

Precisely because it has no permanent collection determining its identity, it can change radically from one exhibition to the next.

Less obvious collections and spaces

Sammlung Schack

A much smaller and quieter collection than the great Pinakotheken, formed around the collecting of Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack.

It is particularly connected with nineteenth-century German painting and brings together artists such as Arnold Böcklin, Franz von Lenbach, Moritz von Schwind, Anselm Feuerbach and Carl Spitzweg.

It is one of those museums that lets you breathe after several hours moving through gigantic institutions.

Sammlung Goetz

One of the most important contemporary art collections to emerge from German private collecting.

Its historic building in Oberföhring no longer operates as an exhibition space open to the public, but the collection continues to present exhibitions at Sammlung Goetz / Schaufenster in central Munich, as well as collaborating with other institutions.

Its holdings include contemporary art, photography, installations and an important collection of new media art.

It is always worth checking where the works are being shown before planning a visit.

Kunstverein München

Founded in 1823, it is one of the oldest and largest artistic institutions of its kind in Germany.

From its spaces in the historic Hofgarten arcades, it presents contemporary art and experimental projects, maintaining a role very different from that of the major museums.

You do not necessarily come here to find familiar names.

You come to discover what is still entering the conversation.

A city where centuries fit together

Munich has something that is difficult to find in other cities.

It does not force you to choose an era.

You can look at Dürer in the morning, encounter Van Gogh afterwards, spend the afternoon among Kandinsky and Münter and finish in front of Warhol or Cy Twombly.

All without leaving a relatively small part of the city.

But perhaps the most interesting thing is not the number of works.

It is the contradiction.

Munich seems built around order, tradition and permanence. And it was precisely here that artists began asking what would happen if art stopped obeying.

Some discovered that a horse could be blue.

Others that a painting could stop representing the world.

And a city apparently too orderly to allow an artistic revolution ended up helping to produce one of the most important of the twentieth century.

Practical note

This guide is conceived as a timeless reference. For that reason, it does not include prices, specific opening hours, telephone numbers or temporary exhibitions, since these can change.

Some institutions may also be undergoing renovation or presenting parts of their collections at alternative venues.

Before visiting any museum, collection or art centre, we recommend always consulting its official website to check access conditions and the current location of the works.