It is a glow that emanates from France - a glow that bathes the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf in a single vibrant atmosphere of color at the beginning of 2026. "Monet - Cézanne - Matisse" is the title of the major exhibition, which presents the Scharf Collection in all its radiance for the first time. It shows how painting between Impressionism and Modernism reinvented vision - as an interplay of light, color and sensation.
Claude Monet makes the morning mist of Giverny shimmer, Paul Cézanne breaks down the Sainte-Victoire mountain into cool geometric tensions, Henri Matisse translates the light of the south into pure color surfaces - three positions, three ways of understanding the world. Yet in the background of this dialog between the masters resonates a story all of its own: that of a family of collectors who, over four generations, continue to write a chapter of European art history.
Pierre Bonnard, Vase with flowers, 1933, oil on canvas © The Scharf Collection, Photo: Ruland Photodesign
The roots of the Scharf Collection go back to the glamorous Otto Gerstenberg Collection in Berlin, which was once one of the most important private collections in Europe. Between Goya, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, a passion began that even survived war, destruction and exile. Margarethe Scharf, Gerstenberg's daughter, saved large parts of the collection - a silent heroine of art history. Her sons Walther and Dieter continued the legacy, deepening the French focus, and so a new bloom grew out of loss.
Today, René Scharf and his wife Christiane continue this tradition into the present. Alongside the modern classics are works by Sam Francis, Daniel Richter and Katharina Grosse. The exhibition shows how a dialog has unfolded over more than a century: between impression and expression, between European sensibility and global energy.
Paul Cézanne, River landscape with houses, circa 1904, oil on canvas © The Scharf Collection, Photo: Ruland Photodesign
The interplay of these works creates a vibrating resonance space - a place where color becomes thought and painting becomes the language of the inner self. What Monet once began in the shimmering sunlight, what Cézanne brought into form and Matisse transformed into rhythmic color, finds an echo in the large-format gestures of the present.
The Kunstpalast is not staging this show as a mere collection exhibition, but as a poetic panorama of seeing: from the fragrant fleetingness of Impressionism to the structured clarity of Cézanne to the sensual freedom of color in Matisse's work and beyond. It is as if light itself were telling a story - of departure, loss and renewal.
The Scharf Collection thus exemplifies what an art collection can be: a living dialog between generations, nations and sensibilities. When you encounter these works, you not only sense the history of modernism - you experience its unbroken presence.
March 12 to August 9, 2026
www.kunstpalast.de
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Young woman with flowered hat, 1877-1879, pastels on paper © The Scharf Collection, Photo: Ruland Photodesign
