You get to know an artist best at their studio. In the case of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, Berliners now have a rare opportunity to visit his studio in a partial reconstruction. Nearly seventy years after the death of this groundbreaking Romanian artist, the Neue Nationalgalerie is bringing his work to Berlin. In collaboration with Paris’s Centre Pompidou(under renovation until 2030), key works, furniture, and tools are on display in this exhibition. In Berlin, 150 works by the artist demonstrate how he freed himself from naturalistic form and gradually transformed sculpture into a play of light and movement. Brancusi, who came from a village near the Romanian Carpathians, began his training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest. After that, there was only one goal: Paris, the center of the avant-garde. He is said to have set out on foot from Bucharest to Montmartre, where he formed friendships with leading figures of modernism, including Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, and Marcel Duchamp.

His career was also on the rise. He secured a position as Auguste Rodin’s assistant, the most famous sculptor of the time. Although he did not remain in Rodin’s studio for long, Rodin helped set Brancusi on the path toward abstraction. His innovative techniques, fragmentation, and dynamism influenced the young Romanian artist. Some of Brancusi’s most important works refer directly to his mentor, including “The Kiss”, which is considered a direct response to Rodin’s marble sculpture of the same title. Brancusi quickly developed his own style: polished surfaces, the pedestal as part of the sculpture, and reduced forms. Without Brancusi, art would have arrived less quickly and less directly to where it stands today. Influential minimalists such as Isamu Noguchi, Donald Judd, and Dan Flavin owe a great deal to him. But Brancusi also set new standards in architecture and design. On his first visit to New York in 1926, he is said to have exclaimed at the sight of the skyscrapers: “That’s my studio!” He was not entirely wrong. Even today, these soaring buildings retain something sculptural. Norman Foster and Jean Nouvel agreed. They named some of their most famous architectural projects in homage to the artist who, even as a young man, aimed high.

Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Constantin Brancusi, Sophie Doering / Credit: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Dist. GrandPalaisRmn, Succession Brancusi, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026

Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str.50, 10785 Berlin–Tiergarten; map
Brancusi 20.03.–09.08.2026 

@neuenationalgalerie

Those familiar with the Brücke group usually associate it with painting. Founded by architecture students Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the group is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernism and representatives of Expressionism. Less well known, but no less relevant, is the applied art that the group produced. The Brücke-Museum spotlighted it with the exhibition Kunst Hand Werk Brücke last week (05.03.2026). It has been a long time since I visited an exhibition so thoughtfully curated. The Brücke-Museum explores the artists’ relationship to the applied arts in three chapters, organized by material — metal, wood, and textiles — with a short introduction at the beginning. Each material chapter was designed by a different creative practitioner. Architect Andrea Faraguna curated the metal works in paper display cases and invited artist Vittorio to design the interiors. Pinned to folded paper shirts, laid out on stepped structures, or resting on paper cushions, the Brücke objects are displayed within. I’m not quite sure where art ends and craftsmanship begins. Highlights on display include a cigarette extinguisher made for Hanna Bekker vom Rath, alongside strangely proportioned letter openers, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s bangle made from twisted silver strips (which I wouldn’t mind owning myself), just like the six silver teaspoons placed opposite it. Then comes wood, and visitors are thrown from the calming paper into the eclectic collages of Jerszy Seymour, who designed this section of the exhibition — a contemporary cave, as he calls it. The comic woodworm that appears throughout the collages becomes a recurring motif and a cheerful harbinger of wood’s decay, guiding visitors through the opulent display. In the best possible way, the whole thing is overstimulating, not least because of the Brücke designs themselves. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s “Bett für Erna Schilling” (“Bed for Erna Schilling”) dominates the room, with carved heads as connecting elements and all the other small creatures twisting and winding through the headboard and footboard. Around it are arranged vessels, really good boxes, and, of course, picture frames.

The final section, textiles, was designed by artist Kasia Fudakowski in collaboration with graphic designer Santiago da Silva, and the two suspend the works in the space. The centerpiece is surely the textile design for Kirchner’s studio, embroidered by Erna Schilling after the artist’s designs. Authorship, especially at the intersection of art and craft, is a major theme, and the exhibition treats it as such. Textile workers are credited as co-authors. Brücke’s color palette feels surprisingly contemporary, and some of its motifs are almost camp. I could stand for hours in front of Erna Schilling’s “Sonntag in den Schweizer Bergen” (“Sunday in the Swiss Mountains”), based on a design by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. For the show and for the research that accompanied it, the curators tried crafting themselves last year. One worked with jewelry designer Elisabeth Schotte, one with wood sculptor Valentin José Kammel, and one with textile artist Lisa Reichmann. It’s just one of many details that show how much care went into the exhibition. And because the Brücke Museum does not think of art without craft, there is also an extensive supporting program. Off to Dahlem for carving, melting, and embroidery. Brücke is calling.

Text: Inga Krumme / Photos: Nick Ash / Credit: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff; Brücke-Museum; Karl und Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Stiftung; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026

Brücke-Museum, Bussardsteig 9, 14195 Berlin–Dahlem; map
Kunst Hand Werk Brücke until 21.06.2026

@brueckemuseum

Everything is spinning. The boards beneath the performers’ feet, the audience orbiting the grand spectacle, the theatre circling itself. Or is this simply a dance film in the making? On 04. and 05.03.2026, “Die Gewehre der Frau Kathrin Angerer” by René Pollesch returns once more to the Volksbühne stage, a co-production with the Wiener Festwochen. And perhaps that is precisely why it feels so right to begin at rock bottom. There is no slow ascent toward a grand, tragic finale. Instead, the opening drops its characters, and us, first and foremost, straight into the fractures and minor catastrophes of their lives. Old love, failed plans, moments that are at once comic, sharp, and broken. And then the stage revolves. Literally. The award-winning set design by Nina von Mechow features a monumental reproduction of Monolith by Alekos Hofstetter, becoming the backdrop for a glorious tangle of references: Hollywood clichés, the Spanish Civil War, Bertolt Brecht himself, and choreographed fistfights. The desire intensifies to figure out what is real and what is performed, and what remains when theatre revolves around itself. On stage: Kathrin Angerer, Benny Claessens, Josefin Fischer, Lilith Krause, Rosa Lembeck, Marie Rosa Tietjen, and Martin Wuttke, joined by a seven-member dance chorus from the youth company of the motion*s Tanz- und Bewegungsstudio. If you’d like to plunge once more into this heady mix of movement, text, comedy, and gravity, you have two more evenings to do so.

Text: Emma Zylla / Photos: Luna Zscharnt

Volksbühne, Linienstr.227, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map
Die Gewehre der Frau Kathrin Angerer 04.03.2026 20h and 05.03.2026 19h30. Get tickets here.

@volksbuehne_berlin