ART HISTORY
Lviv vs. Berlin: charming villas of Impressionist painters
A glimpse into Ivan Trush’s and Max Liebermann’s homes
Have you ever seen a painter’s studio? Usually, we watch art in museums, isolated from where the artist created it. Today, I’ll tell you about two Impressionists who lived on the edge of the 19–20th centuries 900 km away from each other — in Lviv, Ukraine, and Berlin, Germany. Since I know both cities pretty well, I couldn’t overlook this surprising historical parallel.
Ivan Trush and his Art Nouveau villa near Sand Lakes
Ivan Trush (1869–1941) was a Ukrainian painter, a master of landscape and portraiture, an art critic, and an active community patron of arts in Halychyna (Galicia) — a historical region in the west of Ukraine. He lived in turbulent times when Ukrainian culture fought for survival, trapped between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
I found Ivan Trush’s villa accidentally while gathering material for another article. It was already closed, so I enjoyed the tranquility of Piskovi Ozera (Sand Lakes) — flooded 19th-century sand quarries. This area was then located on the city’s outskirts and intended for upscale real estate; no wonder Trush chose it for his creative residence.
My wife and I came the next day, on a sunny August morning, and turned out to be the only visitors.
The villa was built in 1910 according to the Secession (a.k.a. Art Nouveau) design by architect Oleksandr Lushpynskyi. It was one of the first developments on the street. The garden occupied a substantial part of the plot behind the plastered brick house with a wooden terrace.
When we entered the villa, an exquisite blue stove immediately drew our attention. It was decorated with glazed Art Nouveau tiles. I assumed there were locally produced since Lviv had a notable tile factory on the edge of the 19th and 20th centuries.
After the First World War, Ivan Levynskyi’s Tile Stoves Factory fell into decline and was almost entirely dismantled over the years. However, its tiles still adorn many old houses all over Lviv.
But let’s turn back to Ivan Trush. Although he was born in a small village, he managed to build a successful artistic career and became what we’d call an influencer nowadays. Trush studied art in Krakow (Poland), Vienna (Austria), and Munich (Germany), then settled in Lviv in 1898 and held his first exhibition the following year.
Trush was at the forefront of the Ukrainian cultural revival and established contacts with other prominent people of that time: writers Vasyl Stefanyk and Ivan Franko, poetess Lesya Ukrainka, statesman Mykhailo Hrushevsky, composer Mykola Lysenko, etc. The portrait of Lesya Ukrainka is considered Trush’s greatest masterpiece, although it eventually ruined their friendship.
This portrait was ordered by the Shevchenko Scientific Society, which wanted Trush to paint all the notable figures of that time. But the artist created a replica of Lesya Ukrainka’s portrait and sold the original to Polish Count Pininski after displaying it at an exhibition in Lviv. Lesya Ukrainka angrily noted: “I was surprised not to see my portrait in the Society… You didn’t tell me that you sold the original, not a copy, and I was sure I was at least not posing for Pininski alone, endangering my health.”
The thing is that Trush was working in a cold room of the newly built Museum of Antiquities and Arts in Kyiv during intense construction works, and the poetess complained that it took her 1,5 hours to get there and pose for pictures for another 2 hours. Besides, she was extremely humble and was generally embarrassed by the portrait’s existence.
Today no one knows which of the portraits is original. One is exhibited at the artist’s villa in Lviv, and the other at the National Art Museum in Kyiv. The portraits were displayed side by side in 2021, on Lesya Ukrainka’s 150th anniversary.
Not only did Trush portray prominent Ukrainians, but he also created numerous paintings of his beloved wife. In 1904, Trush married Ariadna Drahomanova, the daughter of academician Mykhailo Drahomanov and Lesya Ukrainka’s cousin. Ariadna was born in Geneva (Switzerland), where her family had lived since 1876 due to political repressions by the Russian Empire (see Ems Decree). Ariadna studied literature, history, philosophy, and mathematics at the Sorbonne University (France) and painting at the Sofia Art School (Bulgaria).
Ariadna had attracted Ivan before they met in person. When he saw a group photo of Lesya Ukrainka and Ariadna Drahomanova, he immediately started sketching the latter. Not smoothly coiffed and thoughtful Lesya, but curly and mysterious Ariadna captured Trush’s imagination. Ariadna was a truly Secession character, the ideal of a woman’s appearance in the 1890–1910s.
Besides depicting Ukraine, Trush brought numerous paintings from his journeys to Italy, Egypt, and Palestine. I quickly spotted the Sphynx, the Pyramids of Giza, and the famous Venetian cityscape with gondolas on the wall of the artist’s workshop.
Back at home, Trush founded the first professional art societies in the region and organized their first exhibitions of Ukrainian art. His own heritage includes over 6000 works. Besides, he played a significant role in establishing the Lviv National Museum.
Probably anticipating his death, Ivan Trush painted the creepy “Crimean Beach” — a deserted rocky landscape with a skull-shaped boulder. This was the most unsettling piece in the villa.
Trush died in 1941, amid the Second World War, when fierce battles first devastated Ukraine from west to east and then, for the second time, ravaged our land from east to west.
During the war, more than 120 Trush’s paintings disappeared from a museum in Krakow without a trace. In 2018, one of them, alongside a couple of works by Polish masters, appeared at an auction in Warsaw. This implies the paintings stolen by Germans probably never left the country and were looted or embezzled.
We exited the villa-museum with mixed feelings: happy to learn more about our culture and sad that so many art treasures were lost or destroyed during that cruel times.
Meanwhile, the garden behind the villa was blooming and humming. We gazed at flowers and bumblebees and then headed to the tram station. This was the moment I conceived the idea of this article.
Max Liebermann and his Neoclassical villa near Wannsee Lake
Max Liebermann (1847–1935) was a German painter, printmaker, one of the leaders of Impressionism in continental Europe, and an art collector specializing in French art. At the end of his life, Liebermann witnessed the repressions of Jews by the Nazis who came to power in Germany before the outburst of the Second World War.
I stumbled upon this villa while exploring Wannsee, a picturesque neighborhood on the southwestern outskirts of Berlin. Liebermann’s residence is located on the same street as the infamous Wannsee Conference House, where the Nazis agreed on the “final solution to the Jewish question,” but these events would take place only in 1942, after the artist’s death.
So, the Wannsee villa was built in 1910 according to the Neoclassical plan by architect Paul Otto August Baumgarten. Liebermann called his new home a “palace at the lake” (Schloss am See) and loved it so much that he created over 250 paintings of this place.
The house divided the plot into two parts — a compact kitchen garden and a much larger recreational area. The first part is in the photo above, and the second one is in the image below.
The area between the building and the waterfront contained a terrace, a spacious lawn, a birch alley, and a hedge garden. Nowadays, the ground floor and the terrace are used as a cafe; I spent some time there drinking coffee and reading about this place not to miss anything important.
Interestingly, the wealthy Lieberman family owned a lavish mansion in the very center of Berlin, right next to the famous Brandenburg Gate, since the 19th century. However, in 1910, the 63-year-old artist was tired of the big city’s hustle and bustle and sought peace and calmness, hence the idea of a summer house at the lake.
The artist’s workshop was located on the upper floor in a room with a barrel vault. Nowadays, numerous paintings associated with the villa are exhibited there. It was so exciting to compare Liebermann’s artworks with the actual views of the site.
The landscape with a white bench is particularly famous — it’s even printed on the tickets. You can easily recognize the stairs to the villa’s terrace near the left edge of the picture. I suppose the white lady on the bench is the artist’s wife, Martha.
But what impressed me much more than the exhibits in the rooms was a loggia with frescoes by Liebermann (see below). These frescoes were discovered accidentally by the hints from an old photo of the artist at work. Restorers spent three years uncovering this unique artwork from under 14 layers of paint.
So, we’ve talked about the villa, but what about the artist himself?
Max Liebermann was born in Berlin in a family of a wealthy Jewish fabric manufacturer and banker. He studied art in Weimar (Germany), Paris (France), Amsterdam, and The Hague (Netherlands). After living in Munich for some time, the artist returned to Berlin in 1884, where he married and spent the rest of his life.
Liebermann gained fame for portraits — more than 200! — including physicist Albert Einstein and statesman Paul von Hindenburg, but they aren’t exhibited at his villa.
Although Max Liebermann was a renowned painter, he gradually lost everything over the years. And the construction of the Wannsee villa, this scenic refuge at the lake, coincided with the beginning of his troubles.
For a decade, starting in 1899, Liebermann led the most innovative and trendy art movement — the Berlin Secession. However, under his leadership, not only did Secession thrive, but also declined. Around 1910, a conflict broke out between Impressionists and Expressionists: the Secession Committee rejected Expressionist artists, so they arranged their exhibitions separately. At the same time, Impressionism stagnated, and Liebermann resigned as the Secession leader in 1911.
In 1920, Liebermann became the president of the Academy of Arts, and later, on his 80th birthday, he held a large personal exhibition and was awarded the title of an honorary citizen of Berlin. But he didn’t enjoy his well-deserved acclaim for long. In January 1933, the state power in Germany was handed over to National Socialists, and the artist witnessed from the window of his studio how the Nazis celebrated marching through the Brandenburg Gate.
Liebermann was persecuted as a Jew; his works were removed from public collections; he abandoned all his artistic titles and withdrew from the public eye. The painter confessed to one of his last visitors: “I only live out of hate… I no longer look out the window of this room — I don’t want to see the new world around me.”
Max Liebermann died in 1935, and in a few years, the Nazis forced his widow Martha to sell the villa far below market value but never paid her. Martha committed suicide in 1943 after she learned she would be deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
The vast art collection, which included both Liebermann’s creations and paintings by other artists, was looted by the Nazis. Hundreds of artworks are considered lost until this day. After the death of its owners, the villa served as a hospital and a diving club and gradually deteriorated.
The Liebermann family manor near the Brandenburg Gate was destroyed in the course of the Second World War. A new building loosely resembling the original appeared here in 1990.
While I was writing this article, I learned that one more cultural treasure was destroyed by the 21st-century Nazis — Russians — these barbarians, looters, rapists, and murderers who wage a genocidal war against Ukraine.
On 6 June 2023, Russians blew up the Kakhovka dam causing catastrophic flooding. A unique house-museum of Ukrainian naive artist Polina Rayko went underwater and was severely damaged. Only 30–40% of her outstanding frescoes survived the disaster. Please take action and don’t tolerate Russia. This empire of evil must fall, and it will fall.
