1. Research Library

        60 Jahre, 60 Werke: Kunst aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949 bis 2009

        Walter Smerling

        DE

        Cologne Wienand Verlag 2009

        ISBN 9783868320008

      1. Exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, 1. May–14 June 2009, organized by a curatorial committee including Götz Adriani, Bazon Brock, Robert Fleck, Susanne Kleine, Frank Schmidt, Walter Smerling, etc. The exhibition, produced on the occasion of the 60-year anniversary of the (West) German constitution, presented sixty works by German artists produced between 1949 and 2009. Shown within the charged commemoration festivities surrounding the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009, the exhibition exposed various blind spots in the German process of coming to terms with the post-war period; it was, for example, heavily criticized for expressly not including works produced in the former East Germany, on the basis of the totalizing claim that “art needs freedom and no such thing existed in the GDR.” Exhibited artists included: Isa Genzken, Rebecca Horn, Neo Rauch, Thomas Ruff, Martin Kippenberger, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Imi Knoebel, Hans Hartung, etc.