Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg

Odilon Redon: Girl with flowers (detail), um 1900 – © SMB

Situated in the eastern Stüler building and in the Marstall (stables) opposite Charlottenburg Palace, the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection features an exquisite range of fantastical art works. Covering three floors, the exhibition includes paintings, sculpture and works on paper - a total of more than 250 works by well-known surrealists and famous precursors to surrealism.

Walking around the collection is like taking a journey into a world of fantasy: from Giovanni Battista Piranesi's depictions of fantastical dungeon architecture, the nightmarish ghouls of Goya's etchings and French symbolism of the late 19th century with pictures by Odilon Redon or Gustave Moreau, to works by a group of surrealists that includes René Magritte, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and Dubuffet.

German Symbolism is also represented in the form of graphic cycles by Max Klinger. The focal point of the collection is surrealism, a movement seeking to renew art, the principles of which were published in a manifesto by André Breton in Paris in 1924.

The art collection is augmented by a film programme which includes both the classic surrealist films of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí as well as films by contemporary artists who draw upon surrealism or use its formal instruments in their work.