The Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection includes works assembled by the couple in Frankfurt, Germany, between 1905 and 1925, the most creative years of German Expressionism. The Virginia Museum of the Fine Arts recently announced its acquisition of a major part of the collection.
Under a special gift-purchase agreement executed between Anne Rosenberg Fischer (1902′008) of Richmond, her children and grandchildren and the museum, the vast majority of the collection †some 200 works †comes to the museum. Anne Fischer was the widow of Ludwig and Rosy Fischer’s son Ernst (1896‱981), who was a physician and chairman of the physiology department at the Medical College of Virginia, now a part of Virginia Commonwealth University.
No state funds were spent by the museum. The museum used donor funds restricted to the purchase of art for the commonwealth.
“This gift places Anne Fischer and her family among the most generous of all VMFA benefactors,” says Alex Nyerges, the museum’s director. “Their vision and generosity in forgoing a portion of their inheritance demonstrates their commitment to sharing this priceless collection, and we are immensely grateful.”
The Fischer Collection “is one of the most important private assemblages of German Expressionist art in existence today,” he says. It includes works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Max Pechstein, Conrad Felixmüller, Otto Müller and Lyonel Feininger.
The collection comprises some 15 oils on canvas, about 50 watercolors, gouaches and drawings, more than a dozen sculptures, some 170 prints and several print portfolios and illustrated books.
Among them are Kirchner’s “Six Dancers” and “Two Streetwalkers,” Pechstein’s “Bathers,” Müller’s “Nude in a Landscape,” Nolde’s “Blue Sea,” and Felixmüller’s “Political Speaker.”
The collection also includes works by other major artists, such as Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Kathy Kollwitz and Marc Chagall.
The museum, which will reopen May 1 after a $150-million expansion, is on the Boulevard at Grove Avenue. For information, 804-340-1400 or www.vmfa.museum .
