11 of the Most Euphoric Artworks from Berlin That Will Brighten up Your Winter

The Market Gate of Miletus is a large marble monument built in the 2nd century AD, that has been entirely excavated and reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum. The impressive monument is a part of an encompassing permanent exhibition at the museum which gives a unique and antecedent insight into an ancient civilisation. In the early 1900s, the gate was excavated by a German archaeological team, rebuilt, and placed on display in Berlin; the gate was damaged in World War II and underwent restoration in the 1950s. Now, it can be experienced by locals and tourists in the heart of Museum Island.

Hanging in Berlinische Galerie is acclaimed German-Jewish surrealist artist Felix Nussbaum’s dark yet stunning oil painting entitled Folly Square, also known as ‘Toller Platz,’ meaning The Great Place. Nussbaum’s artwork has been hailed for giving a rare glimpse into the essence of an individual’s experience among the victims of the Holocaust. His work hanging in Berlin depicts the turbulent times of Nazi Germany, as the painting’s foreground shows a group of young artists unloading their paintings in front of the Prussian Academy of the Arts, while its distinguished professors parade past. In the background are Brandenburg Gate and Max Liebermann, the president of the art academy during this time. The painting’s central theme is a generation in conflict, taking the point of view of the younger artists.

Naum Gabo’s sculpture, a model for ‘Constructed Torso’ is a key experimental construction of the artist’s career. Thought to have been started in Norway where he was seeking refuge from his homeland Russia during the First World War, it was completed after his return home at the end of 1917. Renouncing traditional sculptural notion, Gabo developed a new method to express what he saw as more authentic realities of depth and space. Now on permanent display at the Berlinische Galerie, the structure is neither modelled nor sculpted and instead was constructed by sticking together smaller elements.

Hanging in Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie is one of the few works of Paul Cézanne that can accurately be dated to a year. Part of the galleries impressive holding of Romantic and Impressionist masterpieces, ‘Moulin Sur la Couleuvre à Pontoise’ by Paul Cézanne was painted during the artist’s half-year stay in Pontoise, near Paris, where he was staying near old friend Camille Pissarro, who had influenced him to explore the Impressionist path. As always, Cézanne has recreated a motif of vivid accuracy and colour and the warming piece fits well into the galleries overall romantic exhibition.

In September 1903 a large monument to the composer Richard Wagner was unveiled in Berlin’s Tiergarten. The joyous unfolding was captured by artist Anton von Werner, who was appointed Director of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. Werner immortalised the occasion with vivid detail, colour and life, capturing the events before him and cementing his own effortlessly profound style. Hanging in the Berlinische Galerie, this stunning oil painting is a wonderful window into the past.