Albrecht Dürer: Prints from the Foundation of Lower Saxony and the Konrad Liebmann Foundation, Germ

About the Exhibit

September 8, 2007 – November 25, 2007

This fall the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin will present an important exhibition of the works of Albrecht D&ürer (1471–1523), celebrated since his own time as one of the greatest masters of the Renaissance. On view September 8 through November 25, Albrecht Dürer: Prints from the Foundation of Lower Saxony and the Konrad Liebmann Foundation, Germany is a comprehensive survey of more than one hundred woodcuts and engravings by the German artist, providing extraordinary insight into his genius. Included in the exhibition are twenty impressions from the Blanton’s notable holdings of European prints and drawings, as well as other local collections.

“Dürer practically invented the ‘fine print’ by elevating techniques of relatively simple popular imagery and reproduction to the level of the highest art,” said Jonathan Bober, the Blanton’s curator of prints, drawings, and European paintings. “His inventiveness, mastery, and influence knew no bounds. The exhibition is a unique opportunity to experience this towering graphic personality and its development first-hand.’

Along with Rembrandt and Goya, Dürer is considered by scholars and collectors one of the foremost creators of old master prints. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Dürer became known for his technical virtuosity in both his paintings and works on paper. In the early 1490s he visited northern Italy, where the works of such artists as Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini had a powerful impact on his artistic development. In 1495, Dürer opened his own workshop in Nuremberg, a wealthy center of trade. He took the radical step of producing high quality prints for an open market, and the first edition of his famous Apocalypse series of woodcuts was published in 1498.

The exhibition will be on view in the museum’s Julius and Suzan Glickman Galleries on the second floor. It will unfold chronologically, from Dürer’s earliest, still-Gothic genre subjects of the mid 1490s to his refined, increasingly abstract devotional images, as well as portraits, of the 1520s.

Several complete series of woodcuts by the artist are featured in this exhibition, among them the Apocalypse (1498), Life of the Virgin (1511), and The Engraved Passion (1512). Also included are a number of famous single prints such as Adam and Eve (1504), Knight, Death, and the Devil (1512), Melancholia I (1514), and St. Jerome in His Study (1514). From the Blanton’s collection, works by Dürer includeMartyrdom of Saint Catherine (c. 1497–1498), Christ as the Man of Sorrows (c. 1500), and Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1526), as well as Christ Before Annas, Mocking of Christ, Christ Crowned with Thorns, and Descent from the Cross fromThe Small Passion woodcut series (1509–1511).

Albrecht Dürer: Prints from the Foundation of Lower Saxony and the Konrad Liebmann Foundation, Germany is organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Foundation of Lower Saxony, and the Konrad Liebmann Foundation. The exhibition is organized at the Blanton by Jonathan Bober with the assistance of Joshua McConnell, graduate student intern in the Department of Prints and Drawings.