Wir gehen baden! We're Going Bathing! Bilder aus fünf Jahrhunderten von Dürer bis Hockney

"Bathing" is closely linked to three issues: the body, hygiene, and social amusement. The naked or subtle covered body lives on the affinity to nature and naturalness: in its graceful movements and its ambience, by bathing amongst others or in oblivious intimacy, in an open landscape (from Arcadia to tropical paradises) or in a narrow boudoir or an old German bathing hall. The hygienic issue, on the other hand, is rather associated with terms of health and well-being than with beauty. The social amusement issue ranges from water sports to life on the beach to a stage for social life. Baths are a place of freedom, of informality and fantasy, of distraction and eroticism. Furthermore the bathing motif also stimulates allegorical, mythological and literary fields, like images of "The Fountain of Youth" or "Bathing Diana with Nymphs" or "Venus". The catalogue shows the most beautiful bathing scenes posessed by the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, amongst them works by Dürer, Rembrandt, Degas and Otto Müller.

Benjamin Rux is scientific assistant in the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. Prof. Dr. Heinrich Schulze Altcappenberg is since 2002 Director of the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. Born in 1953 he studied History of Art, Literature, Archaeology and journalism in Mainz, Hamburg and Bonn. He published several works about Romanticism, Italian drawings and prints from early Renaissance to late Baroque, and contemporary themes.