Image: Förderkreis Kunsthalle Mannheim e.V
Kunsthalle Mannheim is showing ‘Von Dürer bis Piranesi. Druckgrafik aus der Mannheimer Sammlung Anton von Klein (1746–1810)’ from 24 July to 8 November 2026, drawing on what the museum calls one of the earliest bourgeois teaching collections in the German-speaking world.
According to the museum, the collection comprises around 23,000 prints and reaches from the German Renaissance through the Dutch and Flemish schools to France, England and Italy. Anton von Klein, a scholar at the court of Carl Theodor in Mannheim, also gathered numerous works by 18th-century Mannheim engravers.
With support from the Förderkreis der Kunsthalle, the collection is currently being digitised, catalogued and made accessible online. The museum says this work is shifting attention away from famous names such as Dürer, Rubens and Rembrandt and towards the people behind the sheets — draughtsmen, engravers and workshop communities — and that the exhibition sets out to make those often overlooked figures visible and to open new perspectives on printmaking.
The exhibition is curated by Dr Ursula Drahoss, head of the Graphic Collection, with curatorial assistance from Alessia Tardivo; the two also recorded the audio guide. A German-language catalogue of 80 pages with 41 colour illustrations, edited by Drahoss and Luisa Heese with texts by Marie-Christin Buchta, Drahoss, Marie Flon and Tardivo, is available in the museum shop for 16 euros.
The exhibition opened on Thursday 23 July 2026 at 7 pm, when Luisa Heese, the museum’s acting director, welcomed guests before Drahoss introduced the show; free tickets were required through the online booking system. Public tours run through the exhibition, among them overview tours and a curatorial tour with Alessia Tardivo on 26 August. The museum is at Friedrichsplatz 4 in Mannheim.
