Image: Dresden City Art Gallery, Berlin
The Städtische Galerie Dresden is presenting ‘Otto Altenkirch. Landschaft – Alla Prima’, a survey of the German painter’s development and working locations. On view through 27 September 2026, the exhibition brings renewed attention to a landscape artist associated with Dresden impressionism whose work has often appeared in the shadow of better-known contemporaries Gotthardt Kuehl and Robert Sterl.
Altenkirch (1875–1945) came to Dresden from Berlin with his teacher Eugen Bracht. After studying at the Dresden art academy, he secured a material foundation for his independent practice in 1910 by taking up the position of chief court-theatre painter. His work therefore developed across both easel painting and theatrical design, linking his landscape practice to Dresden’s wider artistic and cultural institutions.
Over more than four decades, Altenkirch produced more than 2,300 landscape paintings. Around 500 of those works can still be geographically identified, allowing the exhibition to trace the relationship between his subjects and the places where he painted. Most of the paintings were made alla prima—in a single, direct application of paint—in and around his birthplace, Ziesar; on the Dresden Heller; and near his home in Siebenlehn.
The presentation focuses on Altenkirch’s handling of paint and his response to changing atmospheric conditions. The gallery describes him as having perfected the use of a palette knife and as being particularly innovative, at times, in his dissolution of form and depiction of weather and light. During his lifetime, contemporaries referred to him as “the Saxon Liebermann,” according to the exhibition material.
The exhibition also connects Altenkirch’s landscapes with his work as a theatre painter. In 1914, he created the stage design for the first Dresden Court Opera production of Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’. An original gouache design for the scene ‘Parsifal. Einöde’ is held by the Historical Archive of the Semperoper and is included in the gallery’s presentation of his theatrical work. A rotating display in the permanent collection adds works by Altenkirch’s teacher Eugen Bracht, Wilhelm Ritter and Ferdinand Dorsch, as well as paintings linked to the Goppeln painters’ group and the Dresden plein-air tradition.
‘Otto Altenkirch. Landschaft – Alla Prima’ is installed at the Städtische Galerie Dresden, Wilsdruffer Straße 2, Dresden. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday and on public holidays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is €8, or €6 at the reduced rate; entry is free on Fridays from noon and for several eligible groups. Related programming includes a 10 September tour on Altenkirch and Dresden painting with Johannes Schmidt, a dialogue-led tour on 11 September with artist and cultural educator Gudrun Brückel, and a 24 September tour on the painter’s locations and technique with restorer Frank Petrasch.
