MADRID – When Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza acquired Young Couple by Emil Nolde in 1961, he initiated a change of direction in his family’s collecting activities. While his father Henrich Thyssen had assembled a remarkable collection of Old Masters during the interwar period, between the 1960s and 1990s Hans Heinrich would be extremely active as a collector of the principal 20th-century art movements, among which German Expressionism would occupy a preeminent place.

In 1993 the Spanish State acquired most of the Thyssen collection and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza thus came to house a significant representation of German Expressionism, a movement barely represented in Spanish collections. For the first time in decades the museum’s present exhibition, “German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection” reunites those works with the group of Expressionist paintings that remained with his wife, Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, and his children. In addition, it offers a new perspective on the paintings through a presentation that departs from their habitual chronological display in the galleries.

The exhibition, which is benefiting from the collaboration of Comunidad de Madrid, launches the commemoration at the museum of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, which takes place in 2021. The exhibition will open Oct. 27 and runs through March 14, 2021.