Art Nouveau and Symbolism: Georg Lührig. A Master from Dresden
The exhibition "Georg Lührig: A Master from Dresden" will be on view at the Museum Wiesbaden through January 17, 2027. It pays tribute to the artist's extensive life's work and brings him back into the public consciousness.
For far too long, Georg Lührig (Göttingen, 1868–1957, Lichtenstein) was a forgotten artist in Dresden. He lived on the banks of the Elbe for nearly five decades. Together with the artists Hans Unger, Sascha Schneider, Oskar Zwintscher, and Richard Müller, he developed Art Nouveau and Symbolism into a distinctive, mysterious visual language that can now be rediscovered at the Museum Wiesbaden. Lührig was last represented in Wiesbaden in numerous exhibitions between 1909 and 1916.
In the *Frankfurter Zeitung* of January 4, 1914, he was hailed as a “natural-born master of monumental painting.” He was famous for his monumental frescoes and murals for public buildings in Dresden, which were destroyed during the war.
The artist also experimented with landscapes, animal depictions, and portraits using charcoal, pencil, watercolor, and lithography. Another focal point of his work is his art from Romania, which he visited repeatedly from 1897 until the late 1920s. Lührig’s time as a war artist from 1915 to 1917 was considered a particularly intense phase in his career. He titled the exhibition of 187 hand drawings, shown in 1916 at the Leipzig Art Association, “Pictures from the Front in Champagne.” That same year, Lührig was appointed to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts as a professor of painting, drawing, printmaking, and nature studies. Despite his training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts (1885–1889), he considered himself an autodidact throughout his life—an attitude that also shaped his teaching at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (1916–1934). As the Academy’s first rector after the war, he played a decisive role in its reform, in the restructuring of the curriculum, and in the introduction of self-governance. Lührig took a rather critical view of Expressionism and New Objectivity, which dominated the art scene in the 1920s.
The donation of an extensive collection from the artist’s family to the Museum Wiesbaden made it possible to launch an extensive restoration project for Lührig’s large-format preparatory drawings and oil studies.
Interactive Stations
The exhibition invites visitors to explore Georg Lührig’s work digitally as well. Interactive stations bring destroyed wall frescoes to life, combine fragments into new images, and allow visitors to actively discover art—while also offering insights into archival, research, and museum work: Eight thematic sections—ranging from early studies to monumental frescoes—offer diverse insights into Lührig’s body of work. Even works that cannot be exhibited are made accessible here. The destroyed frescoes “The Day—Victory of Light” and “The Night” have been reconstructed based on historical sources and can be experienced once again as large-format projections.