Albrecht Dürer

20 September 2019 – 6 January 2020

With its nearly 140 works, the Albertina Museum is home to the world’s most important
collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). The present exhibition also includes
valuable international loan works in order to present Dürer’s drawn, printed, and painted
oeuvres as equally great artistic achievements. And with reference to the distinctive works
on exhibit, this exhibition also offers insights into the latest research findings.

The historical background of the Albertina Museum’s Dürer holdings is likewise a matter of
considerable distinction: their provenance can be traced back to 1528 without any gaps, thus
representing a group of works from the artist’s workshop that have been together for nearly
500 years. This collection prominently features family portraits and both animal and plant
studies as well as the lion’s share of Dürer’s head, hand, and clothing studies on colored paper.
These holdings thus offer a uniquely ideal starting point from which to reconstruct his
personal conception of drawing done in a workshop setting, allowing one to also gain an
understanding of his personal, early-humanist concept of art.

When one observes a work on paper such as the Praying Hands: Is this miracle of analytical
observation and incomparably precise reproduction not far too ambitious for the purpose for
which it is assumed to have been created—namely, to serve as a preliminary study? And to
what purpose associated with typical workshop practices should one attribute a work like the
famous Young Hare? While Dürer was not the first artist north of the Alps to produce such
studies, his creations indeed do go far beyond the tradition of other such exemplary 15th-
century works on paper in terms of their consummate technical, compositional, and artistic
quality, a quality that frequently even extends to his carefully placed monogram signature.
As “master drawings”, Dürer’s works on paper stand at the dawn of drawing’s autonomy as
an art form. And it was with this intent, though still within the protected sphere of the
workshop, that he created these exquisitely precious works that would pave the way for the
esteem that the medium of drawing was to be accorded in the future.