Lothar Schirmer Collection

Art history of the 20th century. Joseph Beuys, Cy Twombly, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Claes Oldenburg, Bernd and Hilla Becher and August Sander are represented, as are Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, as well as important positions in contemporary painting and sculpture in Germany such as Cornelius Völker, Martin Assig and Wiebke Siem. Precious works by old masters such as Gabriel von Max, Philipp Otto Runge and Jean-Étienne Liotard will also be integrated into the presentation with a humorous sideways glance. A total of around 100 works by 35 artists from the 18th to 21st centuries will be on display in Ismaning. They present the focal points of an extraordinary collection that has emerged from personal preferences and at the same time encompasses central positions in contemporary art and photography.

Lothar Schirmer began his more than six decades of collecting as a seventeen-year-old schoolboy. Driven by a youthful passion for the art of his time, he acquired his first works by Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys in the 1960s on a tight budget and sometimes in instalments, demonstrating even then a visionary eye for important movements within contemporary art. The personal encounters with these two artists, whom Schirmer visited in their studios in Rome and Düsseldorf, also marked the beginning of sometimes decades-long, close and friendly relationships with the artists he collected. These relationships deepened when Lothar Schirmer founded the Schirmer/Mosel publishing house in Munich in 1974. He published important monographs on most of the artists represented in his collection, thus dovetailing his collecting with his publishing activities.

The Ismaning exhibition reflects a characteristic feature of the collection: the extensive groups of works in which many of the artists are represented. The first and largest section of the exhibition is dedicated to photography, starting with early vintage prints of Berlin cityscapes by Heinrich Zille. Another focus of the collection is drawing, which is represented in a form characterised by a particular sensitivity and delicacy. Contemporary German painting is represented by large-format works by Martin Assig and Cornelius Völker, while the psychologically charged sculptural works by Wiebke Siem represent an important position in contemporary sculpture.

Last edited on 08.10.2025