Invitation to a press conference on ‘Anselmi to Zuccari. Master Drawings from the Hoesch Collection’
07 June 2022Anselmi bis Zuccari
Collecting connects: Collectors bring things together, enjoy the personal contact with their own treasures and can share this joy with kindred spirits. Accordingly, the Kupferstich-Kabinett, part of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD) museum network, is giving visitors an opportunity to see rarely displayed drawings by old masters from the collection of winemaker and historian Dr Henning Hoesch in the exhibition ‘Anselmi to Zuccari. Master Drawings from the Hoesch Collection’ from 10 June to 11 September 2022. Selected works from the Kupferstich-Kabinett’s own collection supplement the drawings from the Hoesch Collection, inspiring new associations.
In total, 111 works are on display, including 79 from the Hoesch Collection, which was assembled over the course of four decades with passion and an expert eye. The exhibition focuses on Italian drawings on paper from the Renaissance and Baroque, which highlight the creative power of the art of drawing, which reached a special peak at that time. It includes both fascinating and, to date, little known artists like Michelangelo Anselmi, as well as celebrated names such as Andrea Boscoli, Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico Carracci, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (known as Guercino), Claude Lorrain, Pier Francesco Mola, Jacopo Palma il Giovane, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Taddeo Zuccari.
The exhibition lets you look over the shoulders of these and many other artists while they put own visions on paper – whether figures, pictorial narratives or landscapes – with pencil, quill or brush, either as a hasty sketch or meticulous labour of love. Like few other media, drawings show the creative process up close – a decades-long dialogue.
Henning Hoesch, collector: “I am delighted to have this opportunity to share with the public a representative sample from the collection I assembled over 40 years. The drawings by the old masters give an insight into their efforts and individual abilities to observe and capture reality – often more naturally than in paintings. It revolves around an understanding of drawings as the genesis of all art and as a space for artistic interrogation of the artist’s own personality. The immediacy of the medium invites us to comprehend and explore these search processes. With its long tradition on one hand, and its innovative research work on the other, Dresden’s Kupferstich-Kabinett is the perfect venue.”
It clearly shows that collecting, too, is a creative process too. The Hoesch collection itself is a living, changing organism: New works are added all the time, while others move on. The latest new additions, including an interpretation by Battista Franco based on an idealised portrait by Michelangelo from the ‘Teste Divine’ (Divine heads) group, are testimony to the organic character of the collection.
Stephanie Buck, Director of the Kupferstich-Kabinett: “We in Dresden are truly delighted to be the first to publicly exhibit the collection of drawings Henning Hoesch has lovingly and with great expertise assembled over many years, and to do so in dialogue with works from the Kupferstich-Kabinett. The exhibition, inspired by the vision of the private collector, is an expression of the trusting friendship that has grown over many years, for which I thank Henning Hoesch and family sincerely. It comes at a time when we at the Kupferstich-Kabinett are comprehensively researching Renaissance drawings with a team of young academics, taking an innovative approach. The diversity of perspectives plays a key role in this.”
The Kupferstich-Kabinett is currently working on cataloguing 16th century Italian drawings. Since 2018, this project has received funding from the Getty Foundation as part of its initiative ‘The Paper Project. Prints and Drawing Curatorship in the 21th Century’. Individual works from the museum’s holdings will supplement the Hoesch Collection items and illustrate the current state of research.
A first academic catalogue on the Hoesch Collection, entitled ‘Galleria Portatile’, was published in 2017 by Michael Imhof Verlag. The second volume, edited by Dr Henning Hoesch and Dr Heiko Damm, will be published during the exhibition.
