Einladung zum Pressegespräch „Spiegel im Spiegel. Estnische und Deutsche Kunst von Lucas Cranach bis Arvo Pärt und Gerhard Richter“

The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD, Dresden State Art Collections) and the Art Museum of Estonia in Tallinn present their first collaborative project “Spiegel im Spiegel: Estonian and German Art from Lucas Cranach to Arvo Pärt and Gerhard Richter”, a wide-ranging exhibition about the historical and cultural links between Estonia and Germany, which will run from 8 May until 31 August 2025 at the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau. 150 works – paintings, prints, objects, audio installations and visual installations – reflect multiple aspects chosen from over 700 years of history in both countries. The show covers the period from the Middle Ages until the present day and is the first such event on this scale in Germany. It will be opened by Estonia’s President Alar Karis and Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer. This opening is a premiere for Bernd Ebert in his role as general director of the SKD. 

The exhibition marks the 90th birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, which falls on 11 September 2025. “Spiegel im Spiegel” (“Mirror in the Mirror”) is the title of a work composed by Pärt in 1978. The friendship between the composer and Gerhard Richter is a key strand in the exhibition and their artistic dialogue underlies its design.

In the exhibition Gerhard Richter’s “Birkenau Cycle”, which he dedicated to his friend, encounters sound installations and scores in the original hand of Arvo Pärt, which are themselves calligraphic works of art. These loans from the Arvo Pärt Centre are being shown outside Estonia for the first time. 

When Arvo Pärt spent the 2017/18 season as “Capell-Compositeur” to the Saxon State Chapel, he took a profound interest in art treasures held by the SKD. The composer, who is deeply religious, was particularly inspired by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Cranach’s “Christ as the Man of Sorrows at the Column after Flagellation” will hang as a devotional image in a chapel constructed specifically for the Lipsiusbau venue.

Twelve spaces for dialogue narrate historical parallels and cultural transfers linking Germany with Estonia. Beginning with the Teutonic Order, who established Christianity in Estonia, and the Hanseatic League, which triggered an era of economic and cultural prosperity, the exhibition goes on to explore the close artistic exchanges between Estonia and Saxony in the 18th and 19th centuries before moving into the present. The precious exhibits and artworks contributed by Estonia include items never before shown in Germany. 

In the late Middle Ages, the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League were major players in the cultural, religious and commercial links between the Baltic region and the German states. The Estonian city of Tallinn belonged to the Hanseatic League and became an important hub of trade and cultural life. In this section, historical objects are interspersed with contemporary works such as those of Kristina Norman, which critically explore Hanseatic history and its influence in Estonia.  

Close academic links between Dresden and Estonia are illustrated by a number of portraits and self-portraits. Karl and Gerhard von Kügelgen began their careers in the Baltic. Gerhard von Kügelgen was later appointed as a professor by the Dresden Art Academy, where many Estonian artists came to study, as copies of paintings by the Old Masters testify. 

One dialogue is devoted entirely to 19th-century landscape painting, revealing how Estonia’s leading landscape painter August Matthias Hagen lent Romantic expression to Nordic nature in the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich. His motifs include the coast along the Gulf of Finland and the Northern Lights. 

These vibrant reciprocal contacts continued into the 1920s, when Estonian artists such as Anton Starkopf and Eduard Wiiralt fostered friendships with Georg Kind and Otto Dix.

Art in Europe around the turn to the 20th century was marked by Symbolism and decadence, nourished by new quests for religious spirituality, esoteric movements and the liberation of the body. Baltic Germans like Sascha Schneider and Elisàr von Kupffer pioneered homosexual art. Elisàr von Kupffer (1872–1942) explicitly challenged gender boundaries in his work. Sascha Schneider, who studied at the Dresden Academy, illustrated travel stories and the covers for several books by Karl May.  

Both countries were deeply scarred by the First and Second World War and these traces are also evident in the show. Fear and atrocity find form in the works of Olga Terri and Üllo Sooster. 

After the Second World War, cultural life in Estonia and the GDR was regulated by strict censorship. Nevertheless, hopes for liberty and the future were expressed in autonomous art. Works by Aili Vint, Ludmilla Siim, Sirje Runge, Allex Kütt and Uwe Pfeifer feature as examples. 

Contemporary works contemplate the meaning of traditional narratives and their influence on Estonian culture, encouraging a new gaze on established tropes. In 2024, the Estonian artist Edith Karlson represented her country at the Venice Biennale with an installation called “Hora Lupi” (Hour of the Wolf), on show for the first time since that event in the foyer of the Lipsiusbau. The Estonian DAAD Fellow Jaanus Samma has revisited his series “Still Lifes on National Motifs” (2022) especially for the exhibition, exploring works from the Porcelain Collection and the Green Vault and integrating them into his installation.  

Bernd Ebert, general director of the SKD: “Dresden’s State Art Collections have undertaken to turn their sights on Eastern, Central and Northern Europe and to work with key museums from that region. ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ is our first collaborative venture with the Estonian Art Museum. The broad cultural encounter between Estonia and Germany impressively demonstrates that relations between our two countries have been active and influential down the centuries and that they are still influential today. ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ alters our perception of this shared history and art.”

Marion Ackermann, designated president of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz and exhibition curator: “This collaboration was prompted by a journey to Estonia. The exhibition illustrates strikingly how deep the exchange of art and knowledge has been between our two countries, and how artists have inspired each other. Traces of these close links can still be found today. ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ breathes new life into them.”

Kadi Polli, exhibition curator and director of the Estonian Art Museum kumu in Tallinn: “Estonian art could be so much better known. Especially in Germany, with which we share centuries of common history, beginning at the time of the Crusades in the 13th century and continuing under the Baltic German nobility and the Russian tsars into the early 20th century. As curators we have arranged the walk through history in clusters – encounters between Romantic artists, Estonian and German landscapes, different identities, memory, traumas, national self-mirroring – and these help us in many ways to understand contemporary artists.”

Sergey Fofanov, exhibition curator: “The exhibition title ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’ is a reference to the composition by Arvo Pärt, which evolves around a dialogue between two voices that can only exist in mutual harmony. The bond between them is symbolised by Pärt’s paradoxical formula 1+1=1, which signifies unity. This principle underlies the dramaturgical design of the exhibition: the encounter between Arvo Pärt’s music and Gerhard Richter’s paintings opens up insights into the cultural connexions between the two countries. It is a dialogue founded on love and on a realisation that we can only truly recognise ourselves in the mirror of the Other.”