IN FOCUS: LIEBERMAN’S PASTELS

We dedicate the summer of 2026 to pastel art: Over the years, Max Liebermann (1847–1935) created more than a hundred pastel works. These drawings were initially exhibited as an independent series of artworks by the publisher and art dealer Bruno Cassirer on the occasion of Liebermann’s 80th birthday in July 1927.

Pastel chalks consist almost exclusively of pure colour pigments, giving them a unique luminosity and spontaneity. This exhibition is the first to be dedicated to this medium, and it demonstrates how the pastel technique—a previously overlooked aspect of his art—shaped Liebermann’s visual language. Join us and Liebermann on a journey from the Dutch coast to the Wannsee Garden.

Even his contemporaries admired him for his talent:

“Delightful […] small […] pastel sketches: a greenish sea with a rainy grey sky and delicate, vivid figures in the background. The result is not only a feeling of softness, but also, at times, a depth and richness of tone that is rarely achieved with oil paint. It is surprising that Liebermann knows how to depict even bright sunlight on such small sheets of paper with this dry chalk dust”.

(Harry David, Berliner Tageblatt, 1912).