The pristine forest near Barbizon, the wide moorland plains around Worpswede or the Skagen coast offered rich motifs for the landscape and open-air painting to which the artist colonists had dedicated themselves. In the remote villages they also saw their longing for a simple life in the country satisfied. But what defines an artist colony and how did it come about?

With over 200 works, including top-class loans from Copenhagen, Budapest and The Hague, the exhibition presents around 25 artist colonies from all over Europe. The artistic tour begins at Barbizon, the "mother of all colonies", extends over Pont Aven in Brittany and Ascona on Monte Verità to Skagen in Scandinavia. The Dutch towns of Laren, Bergen or Osterbeek are illuminated as well as St. Ives on the English coast or Nagybánya and Szolnok in Hungary. Each of these colonies represents the continent's cultural unity, but also its national and artistic diversity.

Works by famous painters such as Paul Gauguin, Max Liebermann, Alfred Sisley or Adolf Hölzel unfold an impressive panorama of European landscape and genre painting. In addition, the role of artists such as Anna Ancher, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Marianne von Werefkin is also in focus. Far away from the male-dominated academic art scene, they found creative freedom in the colonies.

Worpswede is one of the most popular artists' colonies in the world. The rapid, resounding success of artists such as Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn and Heinrich Vogeler made the peculiar landscape around the Weyerberg famous. Their life and work together is ideal for the abandonment of the artist colonists from academic art, their enthusiasm for the unspoilt nature and the rural population. In addition to the famous village in Teufelsmoor, the exhibition also presents numerous local artist colonies that have never been the subject of an exhibition on this scale, including Ahrenshoop, Dachau and Ekensund.

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