What began as the private passion of Prof. Dr. Rudolf Leopold and his wife Elisabeth grew over five decades into a collection of more than 8,300 exhibits. Twenty-five years ago, the Leopold Collection found its home in Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier with the support of the Republic of Austria, the Austrian National Bank, and the Austrian federal government.
Today, the Leopold Museum is the most frequently visited institution in the MuseumsQuartier Vienna. One reason for this is, among others, the permanent exhibition “Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism,” which features masterpieces by Gustav Klimt, the world’s largest Egon Schiele collection, as well as works by Oskar Kokoschka and other representatives of modernism such as Herbert Boeckl. In keeping with the idea of the total work of art, the Leopold Museum presents not only paintings and drawings, but also valuable applied arts and furniture from the era of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, including works by Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, and Adolf Loos. In addition, outstanding 19th-century works by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Friedrich Gauermann, Anselm Feuerbach, Anton Romako, Hans Makart, Emil Jakob Schindler, Tina Blau, Olga Wisinger-Florian, and Carl Schuch are also on display.
On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Leopold Museum presented the first comprehensive retrospective of the French Realist Gustave Courbet in Austria. Under the title “Gustave Courbet. Realist and Rebel,” around 130 works by the leading figure of Realism were shown, including approximately 95 paintings and 20 graphic works.
The spring exhibition PREMIERE! The Collection of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank offered, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the rich art collection of the OeNB. The presentation celebrated the long-standing connection between the two institutions. Works by New Objectivity artists such as Rudolf Wacker and Franz Sedlacek, as well as independent positions of the interwar period from Max Oppenheimer to Greta Freist, were part of the exhibition. In contemporary art, exciting parallels between generations of artists became visible, for example in the works of Maria Lassnig and Tobias Pils, or Svenja Deininger and Ernst Caramelle. Different approaches to abstraction in painting—from Martha Jungwirth to Herbert Brandl—are also represented in the collection, as well as sculptural works by Josef Pillhofer, Julia Haugeneder, and Constantin Luser.
In summer, selected paintings by the important Austrian painter Herbert Boeckl (1894–1966) enter into a tense dialogue with sculptures by the Swiss sculptor Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012). Starting on 24 July, the exhibition Herbert Boeckl – Hans Josephsohn. Archetypes of the Figurative raises questions of existentialism in the sense of a universal engagement with human existence and opens up new spaces for association.
In late autumn, the Leopold Museum turns its attention to photography of the interwar period of the 20th century. The exhibition New Objectivity. Photography of the 1920s and 1930s, opening on 13 November, brings together over one hundred outstanding artistic positions from photographic art in the Weimar Republic in Germany and the First Republic in Austria. It continues earlier presentations by the museum on interwar art, such as Hagenbund. From Moderate to Radical Modernism (2022) and Splendour and Misery. New Objectivity in Germany (2024). Alongside loans from renowned European museums, institutions, and collections, previously unseen works from private collections will also be on display. Austere, clear, and objective—that is how the world was meant to be seen anew after the end of the First World War, which was both devastating and transformative.