Art | Kunstmuseum Bern - Zentrum Paul Klee
Kunstmuseum Bern - Zentrum Paul Klee - Spectacular art transport from the Federal Chancellery in Berlin to Kunstmuseum Bern
| 2025-08-16 |     |
Sunday of the Mountain Farmers, a major work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, has left the Chancellery in Berlin, and is coming as a guest to Kunstmuseum Bern for the exhibition Kirchner x Kirchner (12.9.2025- 11.1.2026)
Today, after 50 years in the cabinet room, Ernst Ludwg Kirchner’s oil painting Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers) is leaving the Federal Chancellery, and will be shown from 12 September 2025 in the exhibition Kirchner x Kirchner in Kunstmuseum Bern. The painting is known to a wide public by the fact that it is visible evening after evening on the German television news in the background of the German government’s Cabinet sessions. Because of the monumental dimensions of the oil painting, which is 4 m long and 1.70 m high, the artwork had to be carried over the terrace of the Federal Chancellery and heaved down into the Court of Honour with a crane.
After this, the painting Neue Sterne (New Stars) Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) from the collection of Kunstmuseum Bern was lifted by crane. Kunstmuseum Bern is lending the Federal Chancellery the painting by one of the most important Swiss painters of the 20th century in return.
From 12 September 2025 until 11 January 2026, in its exhibition Kirchner x Kirchner, Kunstmuseum Bern is showing around 65 works seldom shown in Switzerland by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), one of the most outstanding protagonists of modern art. A central event and highlight of the exhibition is the reunification for the first time of the monumental pair of paintings Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Sunday in the Alps. Scene at the Well) (1923-24 / ca. 1929, Kunstmuseum Bern) and Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers) (1923-24 / 1926, Cabinet Room of the Federal Chancellery, Berlin). Side by side, the two paintings opened Kirchner’s retrospective in Kunsthalle Bern in 1933, which he curated himself, and which Kunstmuseum Bern is now recalling.
Although they were conceived as pendants, the two monumental paintings have never been seen together again since 1933. Bern bought Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Sunday in the Alps. Scene at the Well) (Press picture 02) directly from the exhibition in that year. Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers) (Press picture 01) entered the Federal Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany, first as a loan and finally as a permanent acquisition in 1985. The fact that the German Federal Chancellery is exceptionally permitting the loan of this painting, prominently and permanently exhibited in the Cabinet Room, is creating an art-historical sensation of great significance in terms of cultural policy.
‘We are very grateful that thanks to the unique loan of the Kirchner painting we are given the opportunity to show the work and its sister-painting from the collection of Kunstmuseum Bern together again for the first time. It allows us to demonstrate the significance that the 1933 Bern retrospective in 1933 held for Kirchner,’ Dr Nina Zimmer, Director of the Kunstmuseum Bern – Zentrum Paul Klee, explains and continues: ‘I am equally delighted that in return it will be possible to see a work by Meret Oppenheim on loan from Kunstmuseum Bern in the Federal Chancellery. An artist born in Berlin who went on to live in Basel, Paris and Bern, Oppenheim went on to become one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. Both reveal the deep and close connection between the art scenes of Switzerland and Germany, and the importance of cooperation and dialogue as the basis for art and culture.’
Wolfram Weimer, Commissioner for Culture and Media of the Federal Government, comments on the exchange of loans between the Federal Chancellery in Berlin and Kunstmuseum Bern in these words: ‘For Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Switzerland was a place of refuge and a new beginning – many of his most important works were produced there. The fact that his ‘Sonntag der Bergbauern’ (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers ) is now being shown in Bern is more than a loan: it is a sign of the deep cultural connection between Germany and Switzerland. We are delighted that in return a work by Meret Oppenheim is enriching the Cabinet Room in Berlin. A living artistic exchange that connects history, trust and the present.’
Photos : © Bundesregierung / Guido Bergmann - © art/beats, Felix von Boehm - Anne-Cécile Foulon © Kunstmuseum Bern - Markus Mühlheim © Kunstmuseum Bern