The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart comprises three buildings: the neoclassical Alte Staatsgalerie, built between 1838 and 1843 during the reign of Wilhelm I of Wurttemberg; the world-famous Stirling building, designed by the British architect James Stirling and opened in 1984; and the new extension, the Steib building, by the Basle architects Winfrid & Katharina Steib, which was opened in September 2002.
The Neue Staatsgalerie accommodates works from the 14th to 18th centuries. The museum’s outstanding collection of Old Master paintings originates from the collection of the Duchy of Wurttemberg. Major works by Jerg Ratgeb, Canaletto, Memling and Rembrandt are four examples, which set the themes of the individual curatorial departments.
The Neue Staatsgalerie is dedicated to art of the 19th and 20th century. The 19th-century department contains works from several different schools of painting. It includes a special collection of works of Swabian Classicism, and also representative works of the dominant art movements of the time, ranging from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Symbolists and from the Romantics to the Impressionists.
Since the end of the Second World War, the museum has focused on collecting classic Modernist and contemporary paintings and sculptures. The museum’s focus on significant groups of works from various movements (Les Fauves, Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, Cubism) and on outstanding groups of works by individual artists (Picasso, Beckmann, Schlemmer, Beuys, Kiefer, Baselitz) accounts for the high international profile the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart enjoys today.
The Steib building houses the library, a study-room, offices, the restoration department, and the Department of Prints and Drawings, with its vast collection of approx. 400,000 works on paper (drawings, watercolours, collages, original prints, illustrated books, posters and photographs).
The Stuttgarter Staatsgalerie also houses the archives of the artists Oskar Schlemmer and Adolf Hölzel, the archives of the art historian Will Grohmann, the Sohm Archive, and the world’s largest documentation centre on Happenings, Fluxus, Concrete Poetry, and other recent movements.
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