Simon Starling

The painter Adolph Menzel lived at Ritterstrasse 43 in 1847–1848. He captured the view from the window onto the backyard in an oil sketch: *Berlin Backyards in the Snow* (1847–1848). In this work, the most significant representative of German Realism reveals himself as a master of proto-Impressionist painting, capturing the unspectacular view in a single moment—its everyday nature rendered with spectacular painterly quality.

Born in Epsom (UK) in 1967, Simon Starling—who has devoted his artistic practice for years to themes such as sustainability, ecology, and economics—has repeatedly turned to masterpieces of art and cultural history: Fiat and Piaggio as well as Tiepolo and Adolph Menzel.

Today, a residential building with box-shaped balconies blocks the view of the courtyard at Ritterstrasse 43. Simon Starling used an elaborate 3D printing process to transform Menzel’s small-format painting, frame and all, into a monumental installation and combined it with a photograph of the view as it appears today—as a dialogue between historical and contemporary visual genres, an artistic reflection on the changes in urban space, and a memento: While Starling was realizing the Menzel project, the pandemic was raging. Public life had come to a standstill, exhibitions were postponed, and people had to stay home. Menzel’s view from the window took on unexpected relevance. “Because of the pandemic, there was suddenly this heightened sensitivity to nature. […] You had the feeling that you could observe spring in a much more contemplative way than you normally do,” said the artist, who, with *Ritterstrasse 43*, explores “how we make images of nature and how that has changed.”

In recent years, the work of this artist—who now lives in Copenhagen—has been on display in museums around the world. The exhibition at Kunst Museum Winterthur selected groups of the artist’s works in dialogue with paintings from the Oskar Reinhart Foundation—in a sense, from Menzel to Starling.

Curated by Konrad Bitterli and Andrea Lutz

Contributors and additional information:

Simon Starling

Adolph von Menzel

Caspar Wolf