DIRECTIONS

You can reach the Pinakothek museums and Museum Brandhorst by

Tram
No 27 to Pinakotheken

Underground (U-Bahn)
U2 to Königsplatz or Theresienstrasse
U3 | U6 to Odeonsplatz or Universität
U4 | U5 to Odeonsplatz

Bus
No 154 to Schellingstraße
No 100 (Museumslinie/ museum line): to Pinakotheken
No 100 (Museumslinie/ museum line): to Maxvorstadt / Sammlung Brandhorst

We recommend the use of public transportation. Parking is not available.

Coach
Two coach parking spaces are available in front of the Neue Pinakothek. Parking is limited to two hours (with parking disc) between 10.00 a.m. and 8.00 p.m.

You can reach the Sammlung Schack by

Bus
No 100 (Museumslinie / museum line): to Reitmorstrasse / Schack Galerie

Tram
No 27 to Nationalmuseum
We recommend the use of public transportation. Parking is not available.

Our area map (PDF, 56 KB) provides an overview of travel options to the museum.

Masterpiece Alte Pinakothek

With this painting Dürer, then 28 years old, created one of the most unusual works in portraiture history. The frontality and the strong idealization are reminiscent of representations of Christ, both aspects however being inseparable from Dürer's early studies of human proportion. His gaze and his hand, representing an artist's tool, are emphasized, rendering the painting an inventively programmatic. This is accentuated by the Latin inscription that underscores the work of the painter: "Thus I, Albrecht Dürer from Nuremberg, portrayed myself with characteristic colors in my 28th year."

Masterpiece Neue Pinakothek

Painted in 1888, Vincent van Gogh had intended this painting – with its radiant colour and vitality – to decorate his studio in Arles, where he planned to paint with Paul Gauguin. The painter has portrayed the vase, flowers, the standing surface, and the background in a simple way, and without great spatial depth. The cold turquoise of the painting’s background contrasts dramatically with the yellow and yellow-brown tones. The flowers evoke a summer day in Provence and inspire an ardent passion for life, a passion which is evident in Van Gogh’s own biography. In the painting the flowers epitomise the sun, which Van Gogh understood as a symbol of life and represented as such in numerous works.

The simple form and vibrant colour are reminiscent of Japanese prints; the Cloisonnism of the Gauguin circle is evident in the painting. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers attest to the artist’s vision of the south of France as his own ‘Japan’, where he could lead a happy, untroubled life.

While the Munich painting is not the only version of Sunflowers that Van Gogh painted, it is a particularly important one. The artist had always conceived of this version and the version hanging in the National Gallery in London as counterparts. Later, he thought to frame his painting ‘La Berceuse’ with these two sunflower paintings, forming a triptych.

Masterpiece Pinakothek der Moderne

In 1937 Max Beckmann emigrated to Amsterdam, where he continued to work, despite numerous obstacles, throughout the German occupation. This self-portrait was painted around the turn of the year in 1943/44. In the painting, the artist presents himself as a majestic and undeterred figure, albeit one whose face is frozen in a rigid mask. The artist’s black, formal attire is merely a formal gesture in this context, one which does not correspond to the artist's material situation but is rather intended to separate and unbind him from the rest of society. This theme is emphasised formally by the large black figure in the middle of the frame, cutting off the viewer’s access to the rest of the picture plane. The effect is heightened by the bent arm propped against the seat back, which is deployed as a barrier. Of his numerous self-portraits, Self-Portrait in Black is perhaps Beckmann’s bitterest; the aggression portrayed in the painting not only protects its subject from a hostile counterpart, it also alienates the subject from himself in the process. Even if he were wearing an actual costume, Beckmann could not appear further from himself than in this supposed ‘everyday’ environment.  The tragedy visible in Beckmann’s rigidity would be only partially relieved following the artist’s emigration to America, with its promise of liberty.

Masterpiece Museum Brandhorst

The American Cy Twombly was born in 1928 in Lexington/Virginia and died in 2011 in Rome and is perhaps the most iconic artist in the Museum Brandhorst’s collection. After pursuing an art degree at various universities, Twombly briefly visited Black Mountain College, after which he began a journey through Europe and North Africa with Robert Rauschenberg. This trip marked the beginning of Twombly’s preoccupation with the Mediterranean, which would become one of his most important sources of inspiration. As with no other artist, Twombly’s work forges a sensitive and lyrical connection between image and text. Alongside Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, he is the most important representative of the generation to immediately follow the Abstract Expressionists and inherit their legacy of abstraction. Along with these two colleagues, Twombly succeeded in ushering in an important new era in American art while developing a highly personal and influential visual language.

Consisting of twelve pictures, Twombly’s monumental work Lepanto (2001), is permanently displayed in the central hall of the museum, according to the wishes of the artist. With more than 170 works – including paintings, sculptures, and drawings – from different periods of the artist’s work, the Museum Brandhorst’s comprehensive overview of this unique artist’s development is the most important of its kind outside of the US, comparable only to the Cy Twombly Gallery of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas.

Masterpiece Sammlung Schack

Triton and Nereid was the last Böcklin painting acquired by Schack. As in other Böcklin paintings, the theme derives from ancient mythology, setting sea creatures in a psychologically tense arrangement that prompts speculation about their relationship to one another. Triton is the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, a hybrid being with a human torso and the tail of a fish. With his hairy back turned to the viewer as he blows into a large conch shell, Triton is portrayed as a wild, bearded figure. Nereid, one of the daughters of the sea God Nereus, is depicted as a young woman with long brown hair and dark eyes, stretched out lasciviously on a rock. She is naked except for a thin reddish veil covering her legs. She casually turns towards a powerful sea snake, which has emerged from beneath the surf. The landscape is expansive and dark. The sky, hung with imposing grey-blue clouds, fades imperceptibly into the grey-black sea, which dissolves in a fine, masterfully painted sea spray. The figures are completely embedded in this grandiose, boundless vision of nature. Böcklin avoids any conclusive interpretation of the situation transpiring in the painting. Rather, the viewer’s associations are given free play amidst the water – the source of life – the creatures who belong to this element, and an erotic tension between the sexes.