Max Peiffer Watenphul. Painter of the Bauhaus.
English and Italian translation of the exhibition catalogue published by Electa
Rome, GNAMC, 21 April – 23 August 2026
The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art presents the exhibition: Max Peiffer Watenphul. Painter of the Bauhaus. , curated by Gregor H. Lersch, dedicated to a significant yet still little-known figure of twentieth-century Europe.
Trained at the Bauhaus in Weimar between 1919 and 1922, Max Peiffer Watenphul (Weferlingen, 1896 – Rome, 1976) developed an original path within the avant-garde movements of his time, choosing painting as his main field of inquiry. In dialogue with artists such as Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, and Johannes Itten, he built a personal visual language attentive to colour, composition, and the representation of landscape.
The exhibition presents approximately eighty works, offering a comprehensive overview of his artistic career: from his early experiments and years at the Bauhaus, through the paintings and still lifes produced during his stays in Italy, to his Venetian period in the post-war years, when his expressive language reached full maturity. Paintings, watercolours, photographs, letters and archival materials highlight both the breadth of his artistic research and the cultural context in which it developed.
The exhibition is arranged across five rooms, following a chronological and thematic structure devoted to the main strands of his work: his formative years, the Bauhaus and the German avant-gardes, photography, post-war painting, and the Venetian cycle. A selection of works by artists such as Otto Dix, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer, drawn from the artist’s personal collection, helps to reconstruct the cultural context and the relationships that accompanied his artistic journey.
The exhibition is organised by the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art and the Max Peiffer Watenphul Foundation ETS, in collaboration with the Museo Casa di Goethe and with the support of the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, under the patronage of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.