Ludwigs' treasures

The National Art Museum of China displays pieces donated by a German collector couple in 1996, Lin Qi reports.

Thomas Eller, a German artist who has lived in Beijing for three years, had a "strange yet sweet" feeling when he looked at some 50 works of modern and contemporary art displayed at the National Art Museum of China last week. They were donated to the museum by German art collector Irene Ludwig and her late husband, Peter Ludwig, more than two decades ago.

"The shown artists are all familiar to me and seeing their works reminds me of my work back in Germany's art circles," Eller says. "What a wonderful way to share our cultural experiences with a large audience in China."

He was among dozens of visitors who enjoyed a night tour of the Beijing museum on March 20. They were invited to Eternal Warmth, an exhibition that runs through Sunday, and shows selected works from the art donations the Ludwigs made. The exhibition also coincides with the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany this year.

China's current booming art scene is drawing international artists like Eller. He organized the Gallery Weekend Beijing over March 17-19, featuring a strong lineup of galleries and artists here.

When the Ludwigs donated art to the Chinese museum in 1996, Western modern art was little known to the public in China.

The couple parted with 117 artworks in their collection to make one of the most important donations the National Museum of China has received in its history. Featured artists include cultural icons from Europe and the United States such as Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol.

When a grand exhibition to show the collection was unveiled at the museum in November 1996, only Irene Ludwig attended the opening ceremony. Her husband had died that July, two months after initiating a donation agreement with the museum in Beijing.

Yang Lizhou, then-deputy director of the museum, recalls telling Peter Ludwig that Chinese people would remember him and his wife for their generosity.

Over the years, the museum has exhibited the donated works a few times and has shown them on tours of cities such as Chengdu, Wuhan and Harbin. More Chinese have gotten to understand Western art from the decades following 1970.

The ongoing exhibition displays Picasso's Busts of Man and Woman by A Vase, a painting the Spanish master produced three years before his death in 1973. It shows people's fascination with love and also a fear of the burden it brings.

Yang says Peter Ludwig intended to donate one Picasso piece at first, but the museum hoped the list would include more, so he added three more works by the master. One is an ink painting that Picasso produced with a Chinese paintbrush on a piece of traditional rice paper. The painting used to adorn Irene Ludwig's bedroom.

Yang says Peter Ludwig told his wife that the "painting coming to China would have made Picasso happy".

Also on display is Cubist Still Life with Lemons, a work of 1975 by the late American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Influenced by Picasso and Jackson Pollock, Lichtenstein adopted their styles of cubism and abstract expressionism to present a quietness in his collages. Yang says he managed to persuade the Ludwigs to give it to the Chinese museum.

Yang calls the donations "a window" through which more Chinese could understand international art, because other than Soviet realist art, foreign art wasn't available in China at the time.

An exhibition in 1996 caused a sensation, leading to further donations by many established artists, including Chinese artists Wu Guanzhong and Jin Shangyi.

Born in 1925, Peter Ludwig acquired a PhD in art history from Mainz University. He accumulated wealth and eminence with his chocolate-making business. Meanwhile, he also assembled what probably is one of the world's biggest art holdings in private hands. He donated and loaned his collections to museums around the world.

Wu Weishan, director of the National Art Museum of China, says as one of the Ludwig collection's beneficiaries, the museum has a duty to share the couple's generosity with more people through exhibitions and other public programs.

Yang believes exhibiting the Ludwigs' donation is meaningful today as art and antique collections are burgeoning in China.

"Peter Ludwig said his collection should serve everyone so that people can better understand art and further boost cultural development. He made donations to museums because he knew museums are capsules of history and bear an undertaking to accumulate cultural wealth from different times," he says.

"I often say that if one no longer wants to keep his or her collection, it should be donated to a well-established museum just like the Ludwigs did, setting an example for today's collectors."

If you go

9 am-5 pm, through Sunday; 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing; 010-6400-1476.