A place for cross-epochal art encounters
The Leonhardi Museum has existed in its current form since 2003, when it was reopened after an extensive two-year renovation period. In addition to a permanent presentation area of landscape paintings by Eduard Leonhardi in the so-called »Leonhardi Atelier«, a wide variety of personal and concept exhibitions are shown in the large hall and in the cabinets, which often, but not necessarily, have a regional connection.
It is no coincidence that the Leonhardi Museum is a special place for encounters with art. As early as the 1960s in the GDR, young artists formed the AG LEONHARDI in changing formations on the first initiative of the painter Günter Tiedeken and thus took possession of the large studio building. Despite numerous obstructions and hindrances by the Stasi and other official bodies, Dresden painters, graphic artists and sculptors created a total of over 100 different exhibition programmes in the large hall on their own initiative.
Today, the connection to Eduard Leonhardi's artistic legacy ensures that the mediation of contemporary art has a spiritual connection here. At the same time, this historical location also reflects the will of its founder, as Leonhardi's house was originally designed as a centre for the promotion of young art.
We are part of the network of Museums in the City of Dresden.
Eduard Leonhardi
Born in Freiberg in 1828, the artist Eduard Leonhardi moved with his family to Dresden in 1840, where his father, August Leonhardi, had a »chemical factory« built on Grundstraße. From 1842, Eduard Leonhardi studied at the Royal Saxon Academy of Art. In 1849, he began working as an independent artist in Dresden and later became a successful landscape painter. After a few years in Düsseldorf, the artist returned to Dresden to take over his father's factory after his death. In 1879, Leonhardi acquired the disused Hentschel Mill, which he then had rebuilt and remodelled. His intention to use it as a patron's home and studio for young artist colleagues quickly failed to materialise. After initially taking euphoric possession of the »Künstlerhaus«, the 1group of artists lost themselves in arguments and soon scattered to the four winds. In 1885, the painter opened the »Eduard Leonhardi Landscape Museum« on the same site, where he presented his own romantic depictions of nature. Eduard Leonhardi died in Dresden-Loschwitz in 1905.
The history of the house
The Leonhardi Museum is housed in a picturesque half-timbered house that somehow seems to have fallen out of time with its oriels and turrets, the huge naked miner carved in stone on the façade and the picturesque decorations of sayings and rhymes. Parts of the building at Grundstraße 26, not far from Körnerplatz in Dresden-Loschwitz, date back to a watermill, which is known to have been built on this site as early as the 16th century. Flour was ground here until the 1870s, before more modern mills forced the mill to close down. When Eduard Leonhardi bought the disused mill property in 1879, he had the mill and stable buildings demolished and a studio building erected instead. The residential building remained almost unchanged and only a small studio extension was added. At the beginning of the 1880s, the young Dresden art academy student Charles Palmié gave the half-timbered house its unusual paintwork and inspiration for the historicising façade decoration.