In the Online Art Lectures series the Museum Barberini offers digital lectures on the topic Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century. Museum curators, conservators, and guides speak about their various disciplines and areas of work, offering a glimpse behind the scenes and opening up new perspectives on the works.

Costs
€ 5

Runtime
50 minutes

Booking
Online

Venue
Online lecture (in German) via Zoom

Please note 
You will receive a link to the online lecture at your e-mail address before the event. Please also check your spam.

Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
How does an exhibition come about?
Dr. Sterre Barentsen, Curator Kandinsky’s Universe, Museum Barberini

The curator of the exhibition Kandinsky’s Universe: Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century talks about the genesis and realization of the concept. She describes the development of the exhibition from the selection of loans to the completion of the catalog to the installation and hanging in the museum—a look behind the scenes at the Barberini.

Wed, May 14, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Abstraction: Unimaginable in 1910, a Movement by 1913
Isabelle Runde, Art Historian

In the early twentieth century, all previously valid explanatory models for the world were turned upside down. A new language was needed, and artists of all genres broke with old forms of expression to create something fundamentally new. Throughout Europe, many painters declared abstraction to be the one universally comprehensible artistic language of the time. The vocabulary of this revolution rapidly found its way into studios, publishing houses, theaters, concert halls, and opera houses through networks established by the lively exchange between artists, gallery owners, journalists, impresarios and patrons of the arts.

This lecture presents Wassily Kandinsky in his inspiring environment. His 1911 book Concerning the Spiritual in Art and his 1912 painting Composition V helped launch the revolutionary art movement of abstraction, which broke new ground in Europe and the United States from the very beginning.