Kunstmuseum Bern
12.9.2025-11.1.2026
A major work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers), is about to leave the Federal Chancellery in Berlin. The painting is known to a wide public because almost every evening it has been visible on the television news in the background of the German government’s Cabinet sessions. Exceptionally, it is now being allowed to leave its customary place, to appear as a guest in the Kunstmuseum Bern. For the first time since its joint exhibition with its pendant, Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Alp Sunday. The Scene at the Well) in 1933, the two paintings will be shown together, reunited, in the autumn exhibition Kirchner x Kirchner in the Kunstmuseum Bern, where they will form the sensational highlight of the exhibition.Kirchner x Kirchner: A homage to Kirchner’s biggest retrospective in 1933.
Between 12 September 2025 and 11 January 2026, the Kunstmuseum Bern is showing the exhibition Kirchner x Kirchner. It features around 65 top-class works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) which are rarely shown in Switzerland. The artist is considered as one of the most outstanding protagonists of modern art. With this exhibition, the Kunstmuseum Bern is recalling the largest retrospective in the artist’s lifetime, held in the Kunsthalle Bern in 1933 and curated by the artist himself.
Kirchner’s monumental pair of paintings reunited as a highlight of the Kirchner x Kirchner
exhibition thanks to a sensational loan from Berlin.
One particularly highlight of the 1933 exhibition was the presentation of the monumental pair of paintings
Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers) and Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Alp
Sunday. The Scene at the Well). They were hung in the entrance hall of the Kunsthalle, where they
formed a dramatic introduction (see press image 03). The artist made these two works as a unit in the
mid-1920s in Davos, where he had been recovering from service in the First World War since 1917, and
both the landscape and the life of the mountain farmers inspired him to explore new motifs.
‘I also already have an idea for the exhibition. Both 4 m paintings should go in the entrance hall. The rear wall of the lantern light room is hung with 8 [eight] 75 x 150 formats. That provides a calm horizontal as an introduction, and when one looks through the door there are only the verticals of the portrait formats. A wonderful harmony on the right and left the big wooden figures of Adam and Eve.’ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, letter to Max Huggler, former Director of Kunsthalle Bern, 21 December 1932.
Today it’s a genuine sensation that the Kunstmuseum Bern is able to show, reunited after more than 90 years, the two oil paintings Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers) (see press image 01) from the Cabinet Room of Berlin’s Federal Chancellery and its pendant Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Alp Sunday. The Scene at the Well) (press image 02) from its own collection.
‘The Federal Republic of Germany is doing the Kunstmuseum Bern a very great honour by
exceptionally authorising the loan of this significant work by Kirchner. It makes us extremely happy
that we are enabled in to show these two major works together again to the public for the first time,
entirely as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner intended.’
Nina Zimmer, Director, Kunstmuseum Bern – Zentrum Paul Klee
‘That these two works, of central importance for Kirchner’s work and sense of himself as an artist can
no be shown together again for the first time – fully in line with his original intention – fills me with great
joy and deep gratitude.’
Nadine Franci, Curator of Prints & Drawings at Kunstmuseum Bern and Curator of the Exhibition.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen [Sunday in the Alps. Scene at the Well], 1923-24/ around 1929
Oil on canvas with original painted frame,
168 x 400 cm, Kunstmuseum Bern
© Kunstmuseum Bern
Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Alp Sunday. The Scene at the Well):
an exceptional acquisition for the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern
After the 1933 exhibition the two works went their different ways. The Kunstmuseum Bern bought
Alpsonntag. Szene am Brunnen (Alp Sunday. The Scene at the Well) (1923-24/around 1929) directly
from the 1933 Kirchner exhibition thanks to donations and a generous accommodation by the author.
This purchase by the Kunstmuseum Bern meant much more to Kirchner than mere financial support –
it was an overdue symbolic recognition. Until then he had not been represented by a painting in a
single Swiss museum collection. In Germany his works were gradually disappearing from exhibitions,
and were banished to storage.
‘I have now had the painting bought by the Museum on Tuesday: Scene am Brunnen (The Scene at the Well), delivered without accident to the place in the Museum that they indicated. [....] Now it will presumably be hung, and will hopefully bring pleasure to many people, just as it brought me pleasure to depict this peaceful, healthy life of our mountain peasants in the midst of their landscape. To be able to do so, I spent summer in the Alps with them every year for 6 years.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Letter to Johann Conrad von Mandach, Director of the Kunstmuseum Bern (1920-1943), Davos Wildboden, 27.4.1933
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Sonntag der Bergbauern [Sunday of the Mountain Farmers], 1923-24/26
Oil on canvas, 170 x 400 cm
Federal Republic of Germany
© Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers):
a symbolic sign from the Federal Republic of Germany as reparation and for peace.
The journey of the counter-loan Sonntag der Bergbauern (Sunday of the Mountain Farmers) led from
the artist’s estate to the Federal Chancellery in Germany. The German Expressionists already found
their way into the new Chancellery in Bonn under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. As a sign of reparation
for the defamation that had taken place under the Nazis, and as a sign of peace, he had offices in the
building decorated with works by Expressionist artists in 1975. The artworks were loans from
museums, from the Federation’s collection or from private collectors. Roman Norbert Ketterer, the
administrator of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s estate, was friends with Helmut Schmidt, and entrusted him
with the large-format painting Sonntag der Bergbauern (170 x 400 cm) as a permanent loan. Helmut
Schmidt had it displayed to commanding effect in the Cabinet Room, in the so-called Chancellor’s
Building of the Bonn Federal Chancellery. The painting was purchased by the Federal Republic of
Germany in 1985.
When the new Federal Chancellery went into operation in Berlin in 2001, the painting moved with it, finding a prominent and symbolic place in the Cabinet Room of the Federal Government.
Since the 1970s the painting has been present as a background to television reports from the German government before Cabinet sessions, and has entered the collective consciousness in that way (press image 04). The juxtaposition of the two paintings brings to the fore once again that ‘image of calm and peace’ that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner already suggested in a letter to Nele van de Velde on 7 October 1921 – even before he started work on the painting. May it shine out upon our contemporary world.
03
Franz Henn
View of the Kirchner exhibition at the
Kunsthalle Bern with Alpsonntag. Szene am
Brunnen (left) and Sonntag der Bergbauern
(right), 1933.
Photography
© Erbengemeinschaft Eberhard W. Kornfeld
04
Cabinet room in the Federal Chancellery in Berlin with the painting Sonntag der Bergbauern by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the background
© Bundesregierung / Guido Bergmann
05
Meret Oppenheim
Neue Sterne [New Stars], 1977-1982 Oil on canvas, 205 x 248,5 cm Kunstmuseum Bern, Legacy Meret Oppenheim
© 2025, ProLitteris Zürich
Press images
Current and upcoming exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Bern
Carol Rama. Rebel of Modernism
until 13.7.2025
Marisa Merz. Ascoltare lo spazio / Listen to the Space
until 17.8.2025
Kunstmuseum Bern of the Future. The Architectural Competition
until 28.9.2025
Collection Intervention by Amy Sillman
until 2.11.2025
Kirchner x Kirchner
12.9.25-11.1.26
Opening hours
Tuesday 10:00–20:00
Wednesday–Sunday 10:00–17:00
Monday closed
Contact
Anne-Cécile Foulon
Head of Communication & Marketing
press@kunstmuseumbern.ch
+41 31 328 09 93
Accreditation for media representatives
Admission to all exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Bern is free for media representatives with a valid press card. Please fill in the digital accreditation form which you can either access via kunstmuseumbern.ch/en/press/media-accreditation or by screening the QR-Code before your visit.
