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Just an hour from Munich, the small town of Bernried couldn’t be farther away from hectic urban bustle. Fields of bright yellow wildflowers slope down to Lake Starnberg, backed by a craggy Alpine horizon. Amidst all of this, the sweeping white lines of modern architecture emerge from pines at the water’s edge. Though organic enough to harmonize with its environs, the building’s design is clearly not that of a Gaststätte (rustic restaurant) or sailboat rental shop. In the wonderful setting of Bernried, the building is also a kind of chamber of wonders: Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s Buchheim Museum. The museum’s striking location and design are an appropriate setting for its unusual collection, single-handedly amassed by Buchheim, a multifaceted participant in the creation and dissemination of art.
The figurative German Expressionists build the core of the collection: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl-Emil Nolde, Otto Mueller, and others. Works by such predecessors as Lovis Corinth, or contemporaries such as Max Beckmann and Oskar Kokoschka provide context, as does the rich collection of folk art. Carousel animals, paper weights, furniture, textiles, and jewelry from Asia, South America, and Europe make it clear that art is not produced in a vacuum.