The Sun Sits – Special Exhibition at the Museum

Paula Müller: The Sun Sits

This exhibition offers a unique perspective on Paula Müller’s ongoing exploration of landscape painting. By borrowing from the aesthetics of Romanticism, Müller assembles new yet strangely familiar narratives.

In this body of work, Müller took the principles of Romantic landscape representation as a starting point. She examines the transition from the rigid principles of documentary landscape drawing to the style of representation that gained prominence during the Romantic era. Charging realistic depictions with emotional states requires deliberate composition, achieved through the targeted use of color and detail, as well as atmo-spheric effects that influence mood and perception.

Harmony and the conscious placement of visual elements guide the viewer’s gaze through the landscape: This sense of pictorial order is already visible in the documentary landscape works of Alexander von Humboldt. Furthermore, his holistic understanding of nature shaped the concept of a close connection between humanity and the natural world, which became a cornerstone of the Romantic worldview.

As a point of departure, Paula Müller chose Alexander von Humboldt’s work Vues des Cordillères et Monuments des Peuples Indigènes de L'Amérique. She reproduced several of these images, but omitted the human figures and expanded the overall composition through a deliberate emotional coloring. The resulting images leave viewers strangely moved, evoking a sense of: “I have seen this somewhere before.” In doing so, Paula Müller employs visual elements that go boldly beyond Humboldt’s original drawings but played a key role for the Romantics, such as fields of mist, which bring a sense of spatial depth and, at the same time, narrative openness to a painting. During this process, numerous large-format landscapes were created, which can be read as citations of Romantic works. The small-format paintings serve to negotiate and discuss the processes occurring on the large-scale canvases.

Featuring works created during a residency at Schloss Wiepersdorf in 2025.

The museum and exhibition are open on Sundays from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. during the summer months. Admission is free.