Four-three-two-one, finished. Finally.
After being closed for 12 years for renovation, the Exhibition Hall on Darmstadt’s Mathildenhoehe is open again for art enthusiasts.
The first exhibit being held here since 2012 is appropriately named “4-3-2-1 Darmstadt,” a show that traces the past 200 years of art in the city.
The Exhibition Hall is part of a series of buildings that the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony, or Kuenstlerkolonie, designed and constructed in the early 20th century.
The planning began in 1899, when Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse invited seven Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) artists to work and live in Darmstadt. They built a colony of houses and studios on the Mathildenhoehe, a hill overlooking the city, and created a body of work that, when exhibited in 1901, made the city the center of the German Art Nouveau movement. More exhibits were held in 1904, 1908 and 1914.
The Exhibition Hall was built for the 1908 edition. It’s among the city’s top tourist attractions, along with the Wedding Tower – Darmstadt’s most famous landmark – and the Russian Chapel, built 1899 by Czar Nicholas II for his wife, Alexandra of Darmstadt.
The show at the Mathildenhoehe complex, which was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site while being renovated, is an interesting hodgepodge of styles and mediums.
Instead of going chronologically, the curators mostly divided the 400-plus works in the exhibit geographically.
The outlines of neighborhood streets and their names are painted on the floor of each section. Information panels, in English and German, describe the artists, their studios and the galleries where their art was shown.
Many of the artists exhibited are hardly household names outside of the region.
The best known is Max Pechstein, though he didn’t work or live in Darmstadt. He is part of the exhibit because a local publisher, Alexander Koch, collected Pechstein’s works, among them “Blue Boa (Lotte Pechstein).”
Among the works in the exhibit that stand out are Vera Roehm’s sculpture “Double Binomen,” a self-portrait by artist Ernst Vogel and Eberhard Schlotter’s full-length portrait of the writer Gabriela Wohmann.
One section is dedicated to art influenced by the 1944 bombing of the city. The standouts are Willi Hofferbert’s “Madonna of the Ruins” and a group of haunting paintings depicting the carnage by Karl Deppert, a survivor of the attack.
An American is also featured in the exhibition. In the mid-1960’s, Laura “Polly” Williams ran an art studio in the Darmstadt district of Arheiligen. She said in a 1964 Stars and Stripes article about her work that “this is all modern art on display. No trees or houses and things like that.”
It’s a lot to take in, but while you are there, the Mathildenhoehe itself is a piece of art not to be missed.
Eleven of the buildings designed by the original Art Nouveau artists are still standing. Their concept propagated the “complete artwork.” Not only were houses of special design, but so were the works of art and the furniture that filled them, all the way down to the flatware.
Examples of this can be seen in the Artists’ Colony Museum, where the exquisite works of the colony, furniture, plates, silverware and jewelry are on display.
On the QT
Where: Olbrichweg 13. 64287 Darmstadt. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Wiesbaden and 1.5 hours from Kaiserslautern. The cheapest garage is under the Rewe supermarket and the Alice-Hospital on Dieburgerstrasse at 1.80 euro for the first hour, then 2 euros per hour, up to 15 euros for the day. If arriving at the city’s main train station, take the F bus to the Mathildenhoehe stop.
Hours: “4-3-2-1 Darmstadt” runs until April 27, 2025. The Exhibit Hall and the Museum Kuenstlerkolonie are open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. The Wedding Tower hours vary; see website hochzeitsturm-darmstadt.eu for details.
Cost: Admission to the “4-3-2-1 Darmstadt” exhibit is 10 euros for adults and 8 euros for children. The Artists’ Colony Museum is 5 euros for adults 18 and over; children get in free. A combination ticket for both sites is 12 euros for adults. Purchasing a Mathildenhoehe Card online also grants admission to the museum and Wedding Tower, the reduced price for the exhibit (8 euros) and a free bus pass in the city and surroundings for a day.
Food: Cafe Restaurant Mathildenhoehe, under the Exhibition Hall, serves breakfast, lunch, afternoon coffee and cake and Sunday brunch. Open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday.
Information: Online: mathildenhoehe.de/en