About the exhibition
Provenance research plays a special role in Max Liebermann’s work. In the first decades of the 20th century his pictures were widely collected, in the Weimar Republic they were part of important art collections. As a result, many Liebermann objects changed their location and their owners from 1933 onwards: Among other things, they were stolen from persecuted families, taken into exile, sold under the most difficult circumstances in financial distress or sold by German museums. The Liebermann family also lost most of their art collection during the National Socialist period.
In December 2020, a project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation began in the Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee, in which the inventory of the Liebermann-Villa is being systematically examined. The exhibition “When Artworks Speak” presents the results of this research and tells the origin stories of selected works from the collection of the Liebermann Villa.
