New National Gallery

▪ museum, Berlin, Germany

German  Neues Nationalgalerie 

      art museum in Berlin, Ger., featuring 20th-century European painting and sculpture.

      The New National Gallery is one of the museums that make up the National Museums of Berlin. The name “New” refers both to the relatively new building and the age of its collection. The gallery places particular emphasis on work from the early 20th century through the 1960s. Built in 1968, the New National Gallery was the first building completed as a part of Berlin's Kulturforum, a cluster of buildings dedicated to culture and the fine arts. Like the neighbouring Kulturforum structures, it is an example of imaginative Modernist (Modernism) architecture. Designed by celebrated modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig), it is known popularly as the “temple of light and glass.”

      The New National Gallery's grounds include a sculpture garden; inside the gallery, some 53,820 square feet (5,000 square metres) of exhibition space are given over to the 20th-century's major art movements. Cubism, Expressionism, Bauhaus, and Surrealism are particularly well represented. Major artists displayed in the permanent collection include Edvard Munch (Munch, Edvard), Pablo Picasso (Picasso, Pablo), Salvador Dalí (Dalí, Salvador), Max Ernst (Ernst, Max), Paul Klee (Klee, Paul), and Juan Gris (Gris, Juan). The gallery's Expressionist collection contains significant paintings and sculptures by the early Expressionist group Die Brücke (Brücke, Die), including works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl), and Erich Heckel (Heckel, Erich). Of particular note are paintings by the Expressionist Max Beckmann (Beckmann, Max), one of Germany's 20th-century masters.

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