Sheep and cows, dogs and cats, but also lions and tigers: The exhibition "Animal Pictures" in the Dachau Gemäldegalerie has opened - a special show with fairy tales and a fleecy factor.
BY MIRIAM KOHR
Dachau - "Where can you see so many animals at once, except in a zoo?" Asked Mayor Florian Hartmann at the somewhat different exhibition opening in the picture gallery. Due to the corona, the opening took place without an audience. Instead, Hartmann spoke into a camera. The opening video can be seen on the Galleries and Museums page.
In the special show “Animal Pictures” the Gemäldegalerie shows how artists, especially in the 19th century, captured animals on canvas. Curator Elisabeth Boser collected a special kind of animal show from her own collection and from other exhibits. Similar to a zoo, the gallery visitor meanders past farm animals such as horses, sheep, goats and cows as well as pets like cats and dogs - but also exotic animals such as lions and tigers.
With the beginning of open-air painting in the second half of the 19th century, artists aimed to show landscapes and their inhabitants as realistically as possible in their real surroundings. "Animal painting could be studied at art academies and at private painting schools such as that of Hans von Hayeks in Dachau," says Boser. Visitors can see chickens pecking for grains in the barn, grazing cows in the pasture, ducks swimming in the water or sheep standing in the meadow. Especially because the paintings were not hung by artist or time, but by motif, the gallery visitor recognizes the different types of painting or presentation very well.
In Heinrich von Zügel's portrayal of two sheep around 1875, “one would prefer to reach in because it looks so fluffy,” says Boser. For Arnold Moeller's sheep from 1912, the overall mood seems to be more important than the fluff factor, just as the sun falls on the sheepskin.
In addition to the very important farm animals at the time, the artists also painted pets such as cats, dogs or parrots. However, the motifs of the works go beyond the local animal world. There are also exotic motifs to discover. "Many artists went on long journeys, visiting Morocco, Egypt, India, Africa or America," says Boser. There are donkeys in the desert or monkey motifs to see. “With the advent of the first animal parks, artists also went there and especially painted lions and tigers,” says Boser in front of an imposing painting by Otto Dill, which shows a tiger in an enclosure.
Dill's picture almost didn't make it in time. OB Hartmann had said in his video: "The tiger is still somewhere on the highway between shipping crates due to the corona." But now he has found his way to Dachau.
As an extra, Boser exhibits artist books from the Scholz publishing house from 1910 to around 1930 in which artists designed pictures into fairy tales. Because animals were omnipresent here too: pigeons, wolves, owls, the goose, the pig.
The gallery visitor will find a total of over 80 exhibits on the subject of animals in the special exhibition. "I limited myself to artists who worked in Dachau or were at least known here," explains the curator. Some photographs, for example of schoolchildren working in front of their easel and painting all the same oxen, allow a nice look behind the scenes of the open air painting of that time.
The exhibition
"Animal pictures" in the Dachau picture gallery can be seen until September 13th. The opening times are: Tuesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, Sunday and on public holidays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. A catalog will be published for the exhibition, which can be ordered free of charge until May 31st.
