BIEDERMEIER - THE INVENTION OF SIMPLICITY

2 February 2007 - 13 May 2007
Friedrich von Amerling
Young Girl, 1834

Oil on canvas

© Privatbesitz, Wien
The prestigious international exhibition "Biedermeier - The Invention of Simplicity" is a cooperative project between the Milwaukee Art Museum, the German Historical Museum of Berlin, the Albertina Museum of Vienna and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
 
The exhibition centres on a nucleus of artistic works from around the 1820s. The characteristic elements of the style were an emphasis on the natural beauty of objects, combined with a simultaneous reduction of shapes. These design criteria proved to dominate the establishment of a new aesthetic vision for Central Europe. 
 
On display will be some 450 exhibits from all brackets of art, originating from the vibrant metropolises of Vienna, Berlin and Copenhagen: paintings, drawings and watercolours, but also and above all, examples of the culture of domestic living. Functional correspondences and a plainness reduced to a mere geometric abstraction are most clearly recognisable in pieces of furniture, silver and porcelain objects, or textile items - in other words, in the objects of daily usage. It is in this regard that the innovative character and the precursor role of the Biedermeier era, heading as it is in the direction of Modernism, becomes most palpably evident.