Kunstkammer Rau: Dreams and Visions

The exhibition is part of the surreal worlds that occupy the entire Arp Museum in 2020. Since the art of the old masters has always been a source of inspiration for Salvador Dalí, the Kunstkammer Rau takes up the visionary red thread in the Middle Ages and pursues the theme right up to the modern age. The great treasures of the Rau Collection for UNICEF are complemented by loans from major international museums and private collections. Some 60 paintings, sculptures and manuscripts are proclaiming dreams, apparitions, revelations, end times and are depicting angels in conversation with saints, sibyls and prophets.

Visions are part of many world religions. The Bible, the Talmud and the Koran testify to the divine revelations of the prophets. Some of them prophesied apocalyptic end times like that of John. In a nightmarish way others even evoked hell on earth. The exhibition illustrates these fantastic dream worlds with a wealth of examples ranging from the anonymous medieval Master of the Life of Mary, Hieronymus Bosch and Jusepe de Ribera, to the large-scale bloody demons of Peter Gilles and the expressive visions of Antonius Höckelmann in modern times.