Johannes Holst – Painter of the Sea
The Special Exhibition: May the 7th – July the 19th 2020
The International Maritime Museum Hamburg is showing a special exhibition on the body of work of Johannes Holst, one of the most relevant German maritime painters. The project was developped with the cooperation of the Koehler im Maximilian publishing House and the Galerie Deichstraße.
Johannes Holst was born 1880 on the Alterwerder island, near Hamburg. He aims to becom a marine painter from a young age. His intention was to bring on canvas the nature of the sea: the wind and the clouds, the waves and the spray. He was facinated by the old windjammers, the gigantic ocean liners and the small fishing boats. But the protagonist of his works is always the nature of the sea, that he reproduces in his painting with all the details that he experienced as a seasoned seafarer.
Johannes Holst was a man of many talents: he not only played violin and Chello, but he was a lutier. He produced around 200 violins during his career. He applied the same principle as a sailor: He was the shipswright of his own yacht, the Mia-Lisa. The special exhibition shines a light on the many faces of the genious of Altenwerder. Over 70 of his paintings from all his creative periods are displayed: starting with a watercolor of the Fürst Bismarck he painted when he was only 14 and ending with an unfinished work from 1965, the year of his death. Most of the paintings of this special exhibihtion are loans from private collectors that are usually not displaed in public.
The entrance fees to our special exhibition are included in the regular entrance fees of the IMMH.