Monet – Cézanne – Matisse

From 12 March to 9 August 2026, the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf will present the exhibition “Monet – Cézanne – Matisse. The Scharf Collection”. The exhibition is being staged in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and showcases one of the most important private art collections in Germany. ERGO is a sponsor and lender.

The Scharf Collection brings together predominantly French art of the 19th and 20th centuries as well as contemporary international positions. Around 180 paintings will be on view, including outstanding works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Before coming to Düsseldorf, the collection will already have been shown at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

ERGO is supporting the exhibition as a sponsor and is also contributing something special: for the duration of the exhibition, the company is lending from its own art collection the portrait of Otto Gerstenberg by the German Impressionist Max Liebermann (1848–1935).

Offers for ERGO employees

Throughout the entire run, all ERGO employees will have free admission to the exhibition at the Kunstpalast Museum. Tickets should be booked online in advance; the available ticket contingents will be released gradually.

Commitment to cultural education

Another component of the sponsorship is the promotion of cultural education: ERGO enabled 20 pupils from the Matthias‑Claudius primary school in Düsseldorf’s Pempelfort district to visit the exhibition. In this way, children gain early access to important works of art and can experience the paintings of Monet, Cézanne, Matisse and many others in the original.

Who was Otto Gerstenberg?

Otto Gerstenberg (1849–1935) was not only an important art collector, but also a formative figure in the history of German insurance: a mathematician and successful insurance executive, he joined the Victoria Versicherung in Berlin in 1873 and became its director in 1888 and its general director in 1901. He is regarded as the inventor of “life insurance for everyone” and – in a broader sense – of the field sales force in insurance. The Scharf Collection stands in direct tradition to his famous private collection in Berlin, which ranged from Goya to pioneers of the French avant‑garde such as Gustave Courbet and Edgar Degas.

The Scharf Collection – now in its fourth generation

The history of the collection: Margarethe Scharf succeeded in saving the majority of the collection through the Second World War. Her grandsons Walther and Dieter Scharf each built up their own collections based on the works they inherited: Dieter Scharf focused on Surrealism. Since 2008, his collection has been on permanent loan to the Nationalgalerie as the Scharf Gerstenberg Collection in Berlin‑Charlottenburg.

Walther Scharf and his wife Eve – later also together with their son René – further developed the French focus. They acquired works by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

Fourth generation: today, René Scharf and his wife Christiane are directing their attention to contemporary art. Their interest is particularly in the extensions of the medium of painting and in the relationship between figurative and abstract visual worlds. Against this backdrop, René and Christiane Scharf are continuing the family collecting tradition into the present with works by Sam Francis, Sean Scully, Daniel Richter and Katharina Grosse.