Osnabrück-born Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum (1904–44), who emigrated to Belgium and was murdered at Auschwitz, hauntingly documented life, exile, persecution and death under Nazi occupation in much of his work. This museum presents works from all phases of his professional life, including visceral key pieces such as Self-Portrait with Jewish Pass and his last work Triumph of Death. The museum building, shaped like an interconnected series of concrete shards, is a 1998 masterpiece by Daniel Libeskind.
The building uses space magnificently to illustrate the absence of orientation in the artist's eventful and tragic life. Libeskind designed it in 1998, before his much-lauded and famous Jewish museum in Berlin. The museum is next to the Kulturgeschichtliches Museum (Cultural History Museum, entry included in price), which has cabinets designed by Libeskind holding works by Albrecht Dürer.