Journey into Freedom.

Three places, one promise: freedom. Between 1830 and 1930, artists from across Europe travelled to the continent’s outer edges: to Capri in southern Italy, to Skagen in northern Denmark, and also to Monte Verità in Switzerland.

Far from industrialised cities and the constraints of bourgeois society, they sought a different way of life: closer to nature, closer to what they believed to be “authentic”. These places of longing embodied an artistic quest for a free and communal future. The exhibition traces these aspirations – and the disillusionment that followed. Those who stayed longer soon saw beyond the postcard image: fishermen risking their lives, women, children and elderly people working hard, poverty. It is precisely in this tension between utopia and reality that something new and radical emerged.

Featured artists (selection): Anna Ancher (1859–1935), Michael Ancher (1849–1927), Luise Begas-Parmentier (1841–1920), Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913), Filippo Franzoni (1857–1911), Gustav Gräser (1879–1958), Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941), Christian Krohg (1852–1925), Marie Krøyer (1867–1940), P. S. Krøyer (1851–1909), Elise Mahler (1856–1924), Edmond-Jean de Pury (1845–1911), Louis Léopold Robert (1794–1835), Susanne Schwob (1888–1967), Friedrich Thöming (1802–1873), Bertha Wegmann (1847–1926), Marianne von Werefkin (1870–1938)

Co-Curators: Livia Wermuth and Andreas Schwab
Assistant curator: Kim Hue Luong