This exhibition consists of two strands. One is the friendship between Arvo Pärt, who turns 90 this year, and Gerhard Richter, who is three years his senior: Richter’s Birkenau cycle (2014), which the artist dedicated to Pärt, is accompanied by a sound installation and a handwritten score by the Estonian composer. The second highlights the wider artistic affinities between Germany and Estonia over more than 700 years. This ambitious display is grouped by themes such as 19th-century landscape painting, in which August Matthias Hagen’s sublime visions of the Gulf of Finland, say, are compared with the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich. While works by Richter and Pärt have been paired before – by the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, for instance, in an exhibition in 2015 – this is the first time they are appearing against a historical backdrop (8 May–31 August).
Find out more from the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau’s website.
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Portrait of Gisela (1980), Uwe Pfeifer. Albertinum, Dresden. Photo: © Albertinum, SKD, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025
Bustling Street (1931), Eduard Ole. Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn. Photo: Stanislav Stepaško; © Art Museum of Estonia
Stony Seashore (1975), Aili Vint. Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn. Photo: Stanislav Stepaško; © Art Museum of Estonia; © the artist