The Scharf Collection, a German private collection of 19th and 20th century French art and contemporary international art, will be presented for the first time.
She is the fourth generation to continue a branch of the important Otto Gerstenberg Collection in Berlin, which ranges from the beginnings of modernism with Francisco de Goya to the French avant-garde of the second half of the 19th century with Gustave Courbet and Edgar Degas and the entire graphic work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Despite many wartime losses, Gerstenberg's daughter Margarethe Scharf was able to save the majority of the collection and bequeath it to her two sons Walther and Dieter Scharf. After dividing the collection between the grandchildren, Walther Scharf, his wife Eve and son René continued the French focus and added works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, among others. Today, René Scharf and his wife Christiane Scharf focus on contemporary international positions, including works by Sam Francis, Daniel Richter and Katharina Grosse. With a particular interest in the boundaries of the medium of painting and the relationship between representational and abstract imagery, they are extending the family collection tradition into the present day.
An exhibition of the Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, in co-operation with the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. (Source: Kunstpalast)
Exhibition period: 12 March to 9 August 2026
