Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst

Description

In the Musikviertel of Leipzig stands the Herfurthsche Villa, a former upper-middle-class residence on the corner plot at Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 11 / Ferdinand-Rhode-Straße.

The building was erected in 1892–1894 to designs by Leipzig architects for the geologist Hermann Credner (1841–1913). In the following decades the villa developed into an intellectual and cultural centre of the city; guests included figures such as Meyer und Brockhaus, Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Klinger and Max Liebermann. In 1913 the house passed into the ownership of the publisher Edgar Herfurth. The building was remodelled in 1915 and 1927. After its expropriation in 1945 a university clinic took over the premises. From 1990 the Hochschule für Musik „Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy“ used the villa before it was handed over to the Förderkreis der Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig. In 1996 restoration and conversion work was carried out.

Stylistically the house belongs to Historicism and takes its cues from North Italian villas. The main axis is oriented toward the street corner, so that the building is set diagonally on the plot. The rendered façade displays bay windows, balconies and a column-supported portico on a pronounced central risalit. The northwest side functions as the display façade; above a balcony on the first floor, vaulted in the manner of a triumphal arch, there is a painting that adorns the recessed gable wall.