An artistic retreat on the outskirts of the Grunewald forest for the sculptor Georg Kolbe (1877-1947).

Georg Kolbe was the leading German sculptor of the first half of the twentieth century. Mies van der Rohe, for example, placed Kolbe's sculpture 'Morning' - a female nude with arms outstretched and upraised - in the reflecting pool of his Barcelona Pavilion built on the occasion of the 1929 World Exposition.

His home and studio, the 'Sensburg', was built to his specifications by the architect Ernst Rentsch. Its floor-to-ceiling windows attest to its Modernist heritage; today it stands as a rare example of an extant early twentieth-century sculptor's studio. The museum was the first to open in West Berlin, three years after Kolbe's death in 1947.

Similar studio museums...

• 2 Willow Road, United Kingdom - a Modernist family home and architect's studio built by Ernö Goldfinger (1902-1987)
• Asmundarsafn, Iceland - a sleekly curved gallery space and studio designed by Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982)
• The Carl Eldh Studio Museum, Sweden - a light-flooded sculptor's studio designed by Kolbe's near-contemporary, Ragnar Östberg (1866-1945)