Art is anything but a foreign concept in the capital – Berlin is one of the most important European centers when it comes to presenting extraordinary works. Exciting exhibitions take place throughout the year, offering everything from avant-garde positions to classical masterpieces. And even if an exhibition is not to your taste, there is always a museum to discover – from the most famous to the most unusual. Since October 24, 2025, you can now visit a particularly exclusive art experience at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin until February 15, 2026: The Scharf Collection is being shown for the first time on this scale – with 150 important works by greats such as Goya, Monet, Cézanne, Bonnard and Grosse.
Discover outstanding works by Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. The exhibition takes you on an art-historical journey – from Goya and Realism to the French Impressionists and Cubists through to contemporary art. The Scharf Collection is the direct successor to Otto Gerstenberg’s important private collection in Berlin, which ranged from the beginnings of modernism with Goya to pioneers of the French avant-garde such as Gustave Courbet and Edgar Degas. Gerstenberg’s daughter Margarethe Scharf managed to preserve a large part of the collection after the Second World War despite numerous war losses. The grandsons Walther and Dieter Scharf built up their own collections on the inherited works. Dieter Scharf ‘s collection has been on permanent loan to the Nationalgalerie in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection in Berlin-Charlottenburg since 2008.
Walther Scharf and his wife Eve expanded the French focus of the collection to include works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Their son René Scharf and his wife Christiane, on the other hand, focused more strongly on contemporary art – in particular on painting and the tension between figurative and abstract imagery – and brought the collection firmly into the present with works by Sam Francis, Sean Scully, Daniel Richter and Katharina Grosse.
The Scharfs are now stepping into the limelight with this collection – despite their previous anonymity – and are presenting 150 selected works in the Alte Nationalgalerie. You can visit the exhibition in Berlin until February 15, 2026. The first room is entirely dedicated to the private collection: one major work follows the next. Pierre Bonnard’s painting “The Large Bathtub” (1937/39) is the absolute eye-catcher in the center. On the left wall are works by Claude Monet, from the early “Farm at Chailly” (1867) to the “Waterloo Bridge” from 1903. On the right wall you will encounter Paul Cézanne, one of the most important pioneers of modernism – the “House with a Red Roof” from 1890 is particularly impressive.
The second room begins with another work by Bonnard, the lively view of the “Place de Clichy” (1906). In the right-hand side room, you can also marvel at 19 small bronzes by Honoré Daumier, including heads of parliamentarians of the July Monarchy from 1830 and the full figure “Ratapoil”, created in 1851, which Daumier designed as a type of political troublemaker. Works by Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet are of course also included.
This is the first time that such a comprehensive exhibition of the Scharf Collection has ever been presented!