Gropius Bau

Gropius Bau 2023

Es lebe die Linie oder die Kunst des Aufräumens

Es lebe die Linie oder die Kunst des Aufr&auml;umens (in German only)

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place for encounters with art and each other. As an internationally renowned exhibition centre, it offers space for major exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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The Practice – What Moves Artists&nbsp;is a new book series by Gropius Bau, that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time. In the first volume of the series,&nbsp;On Making Less, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija compiles various ideas and approaches to this topic.

The Practice – What Moves Artists

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To kick off our new event series Sp&auml;tschicht, we’re teaming up with Pop-Kultur Festival we invite you to a free live programme with DJ sets by Planningtorock and Meg10, a concert by Wa22ermann, performances by Jimmy Robert’s class, Queer Ping Pong and a screening with Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.

Sp&auml;tschicht x Pop-Kultur Festival

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YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

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Only until 19 January 2025 – we’ll be back for you in March! 🐛

BAUBAU

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In a nationwide competition, 60 ensembles applied for this year’s Theatertreffen der Jugend. The eight award winners selected by the jury have now been selected. In spring, their productions will be shown at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

Theatertreffen der Jugend

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Performing Exiles is an international and interdisciplinary festival produced by the Berliner Festspiele, that seeks to make diasporic lives in the city of Berlin visible and explore the contemporary meaning of exile. A preview of the programme has already been published. &nbsp;

Performing Exiles

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Tanz im August, presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, is a festival of contemporary dance in Berlin. With three productions, it will once again be a guest at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year. The pre-sale of some programme highlights has already started.

Tanz im August

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Eight selected concert highlights of Musikfest Berlin 2025 have already been published and are on sale. These include guest performances by the world’s best symphony orchestras and choirs from the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy, which are rarely heard in Berlin.

Musikfest Berlin

More Berliner Festspiele

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world. The programme for the 25th&nbsp;ilb will take place from 11 to 20&nbsp;September 2025. The Young Programme will run from 15 to 24&nbsp;September 2025. The main venue is the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, with additional locations for the Young Programme including Theater an der Parkaue and the Gelbe Villa.

25th international literature festival berlin

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A&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On the Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

BAUBAU

Spielen in der Stadt

A Short History from 1900 to the Present

What has been the role of play in public space, both historically and in the present? Complementing BAUBAU, our free play space for kids, Gabriela Burkhalter’s&nbsp;Playing in the City&nbsp;presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City

Now at Gropius Bau

BAUBAUA&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

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For more than three decades, Rirkrit Tiravanija has been expanding the possibilities of what can happen in an exhibition space. As part of his practice, the artist creates situations that offer space to eat and drink, play and rest. They encourage chance encounters, relationships and their failure – in other words: life.&nbsp;The exhibition&nbsp;DAS GL&Uuml;CK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG&nbsp;(Happiness is not always fun)&nbsp;presents more than 80 of the artist’s works created between 1987 and 2024.

Rirkrit Tiravanija:&nbsp;DAS GL&Uuml;CK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG

Now at the Gropius Bau

With Queer Ping Pong, Jimmy Robert’s Class, Team Ping Pong, Planningtorock, Meg10 and Wa22ermann

Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists. Its diverse events focus on exchange and discussion, bringing together local and global perspectives.&nbsp;

About the Gropius Bau

We are looking forward to welcoming you back in mid-March with the reopening of our play space, <a href="${link:{uuid:{df42e57d-a14a-4b44-a5e4-9d3e7dcab5a6},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/baubau}}}">BAUBAU</a> (on 22 March), and two exhibitions, <a href="${link:{uuid:{55d64239-53fe-4b12-8567-a63191c6cae4},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/vaginal-davis}}}">Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt</a> (from 21 March) and <a href="${link:{uuid:{9618c701-bd05-432e-b688-5943e1f7fc57},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/yoko-ono}}}">YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND</a> (from 11 April). For details on opening hours and tickets, please visit our <a href="${link:{uuid:{62c3018b-bb40-46ce-8019-646ec5cd2e4a},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/besuch/informationen}}}">Information &amp; Tickets</a> page. We look forward to seeing you soon!

See you in March!

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Becoming more accessible – with the help of Artificial Intelligence: the new AI-based app Gropius Bau Prisma allows you to translate exhibition texts into 36 languages, play them as audio, ask questions about the works on display and activate subtitles in various languages during events.

Gropius Bau Prisma

Key Visual Neu

Marking twenty years since artist, writer and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau presents the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work in Germany. In her expansive oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets Black counter-culture and resistance meets desire.&nbsp;Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt&nbsp;features installations, paintings, video and film works, zines, writing, music and performances, offering an overview of Davis’ practice and artistic collaborations.

Vaginal DavisFabelhaftes Produkt

Since the 1950s, Yoko Ono has been ahead of her time, leaving her mark on visual arts, music and activism. To honour her groundbreaking work, Gropius Bau presents the comprehensive solo exhibition&nbsp;YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND. Spanning the first floor and the atrium of Gropius Bau, the show brings together over 200 works from seven decades, revealing her radical approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

YOKO ONOMUSIC OF THE MIND

Current Exhibitions

Marking twenty years since artist, writer and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau presents the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work in Germany. In her expansive oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets Black counter-culture and resistance meets desire.&nbsp;Fabelhaftes Produkt&nbsp;offers&nbsp;an overview of Davis’ practice and artistic collaborations.

Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

Currently at Gropius Bau

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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The Gropius Bau is closed on Tuesdays.

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Gropius Bau 2024

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Ausstellungen 2015

The exhibition shows a wide range of works of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag which owns the world´s largest Mondrian collection. Benno Tempel, the Director of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, facilitated this project. The exhibition was curated by Mondrian expert Hans Janssen, a curator at the Gemeentemuseum.
“The first element of my painting to change was colour”, noted Mondrian in 1941. When making this statement, he omitted the fact that he had already made significant reductions to his drawings by gradually emphasising the relationships and rhythmic structures between vertical and horizontal lines. This influenced his work with colour and he developed from a traditionalist into a protagonist of modern art.
Piet Mondrian was born to a primary school teacher in the city of Amersfoort in the province of Utrecht in Holland on 7th March 1872. His family followed a strict principle of Calvinism. Mondrian studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and was interested in the painters of the Hague School and their painting technique.
His central themes were most notably fields, farms, windmills and recurrently trees and riversides. Mondrian began experimenting in around 1905. He sought out changing styles of painting and painting techniques on his motifs according to their light modulation, choosing an impressionist style of painting for a landscape bathed in sunlight and a fauvist-expressionist style for a landscape in evening light. Critics started to pay attention to him and in 1910, the group “Moderne Kunst Kring” (Circle of Modern Art) was formed with artists Jan Toorop, Jan Sluyters and Piet Mondrian. In 1911, they exhibited their works in the “Moderne Kunst Kring” exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam together with French avant-garde artists including Cézanne, Braque and Picasso.
In the same year, one of Mondrian’s works was also featured in the “Salon des Indépendants“ in Paris. He moved to Paris in 1912. At this time, his work was influenced by Cubism, but his artistic interest tended to focus on the structure and organisation of image areas. Mondrian formulated his pursuit of “harmony through the equality of lines, colours and areas“. He schematised landscapes and transformed natural motifs into abstract compositions while increasingly using lines as vertical and horizontal elements. In 1913, his works were featured in Herwarth Walden’s major exhibition “Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon“ in Berlin. In 1914, Mondrian visited his ailing father and didn’t return to Paris until after the First World War. He then continued to dismantle figurative elements. He referred to his works as “compositions“, explored theosophy and went on to label his style as “neoplasticism“.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Mondrian exhibited his works in many locations such as The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Paris, New York, Dresden, Berlin, Potsdam and Vienna. His financial success, however, was a long time coming. In order to survive, he still painted watercolours of flowers and accepts contract works.
As an art theorist and co-founder of the “De Stijl“ group of artists founded by Dutch painters, architects, designers, graphic artists and poets in 1917, Mondrian wrote pieces such as Le Néo-Plasticisme, the German translation of which was published as the Bauhaus Book no. 5 under the title “Neue Gestaltung. Neo-Plastizismus, Nieuwe Beelding.“ (New Design. Neo-Plasticisim, Nieuwe Beelding) in 1925.
Mondrian continued to work on his ‘compositions’ by simplifying his use of lines down to their extremes or giving them rhythm by forming a complex lattice structure and adding a few coloured areas. His paintings are defamed in Germany after 1933 as degenerate, some of his works were exhibited at the exhibition “Degenerate Art” in Munich in 1937. The Nazi regime and the impending World War Two led him to move to London in 1938 before relocating to New York in 1940.
In the USA and in New York in particular, his work was met with a great deal of interest. Many artists who had fled from Europe lived in New York in the 1940s. During this time, Mondrian brightened up his new works by using primary colours in a mosaic style and in doing so, transcended his earlier strict compositions in favour of a new rhythmic approach to the motif that could almost be described as musical. Mondrian died from the effects of pneumonia in New York on 1st February 1944.
The laconic structure of his later works was and continues to be reflected in architecture, fashion, advertising and popular culture right up to the present day.

With his characteristic compositions of rectangles and black lines, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) is regarded as one of the founders of abstract painting. He is considered to be a master of the composition of coloured areas. Through his method of strict reduction to the basic elements of painting, Mondrian created icons of classic modernism. A lesser-known fact, however, is that Mondrian started out by creating paintings in the impressionist style of the Hague School and explored different styles of art before lines and the organisation of image areas dominated his artistic creations. A new exhibition developed by the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in cooperation with the Martin-Gropius-Bau now endeavours to illustrate this development in Mondrian’s works.
With about 50 paintings and drawings, the exhibition provides visitors with an insight into Mondrian’s quest for his own artistic path. The exhibition is the first major exhibition in Berlin to be dedicated to Mondrian since the opening exhibition of the Neue Nationalgalerie in 1968.

Piet Mondrian. Die Linie

Piet Mondrian. The Line

Es lebe die Linie oder die Kunst des Aufräumens (in German only)

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The Berliner Festspiele organise a range of festivals and art exhibitions, concerts, dance and theatre performances, readings, lectures, debates and much more throughout the year. These events are presented at a range of locations across Berlin but are concentrated primarily at their own two venues: the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

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Today’s Events

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The international and interdisciplinary festival produced by the Berliner Festspiele

Performing Exiles

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37th&nbsp;International Festival Berlin

Tanz im August

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world.

25th international literature festival berlin

Leichte Sprache

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You can listen to some of our events this year digitally in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library after the live concerts.&nbsp;In addition, On Demand offers from past years are available.

Musikfest Berlin in the Media Library

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The international Jazzfest Research Lab&nbsp;welcomes academics and students to take a critical look at the festival’s archive, its programmes, creators, musicians and – last but not least – its myths. In two seminars during the summer semester of 2024, students from the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Hildesheim have explored the festival’s history from various perspectives. In this film, the participants give a first look at how they dealt with their research subject.

Introducing: Jazzfest Research Lab

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To mark its 60th anniversary, Jazzfest Berlin is celebrating the cultural diversity of the neighbouring district of Moabit in collaboration with around 35 official partners and initiatives and with over 350 participants of all ages.&nbsp;In June 2024, interviews were conducted with 20 partners who presented their perspectives, wishes and ideas for the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit. You can get a first impression with this film.

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Curated by&nbsp;Meron Mendel and Saba-Nur Cheema&nbsp;

From 13 to 16 June 2024, the interdisciplinary themed days “Reflexes &amp; Reflections” on the Israel-Palestine conflict and its consequences for society in Germany took place at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. You can now find video and audio recordings of the discourse events in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library!

Reflexes &amp; Reflections. 7 October, the war in Gaza and the debate in Germany

In the Media Library

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The 10 Remarkable Productions 2024

On 26 January, the Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of 10 remarkable productions for the 2024 Theatertreffen at a press conference. Our congratulations go to the nominated production teams and all participants! The programme will be published on 5 April.

Theatertreffen 2024

“Radical Playgrounds”, an art parcours at the Gropius Bau, is spending eleven weeks exploring the differences between the concepts of play as competition and free play. Visitors are invited to walk and climb on the various installations and sculptures, to activate them and to shape the project collectively.

Summer School 2025

As part of Performing Exiles there will be a Summer School from 16 to 28&nbsp;June 2025. This will offer workshops, seminars and mentoring. The participants will see the performances and guest productions in the festival programme and visit artistic initiatives and cultural institutions in Berlin that operate across a wide range of disciplines and contexts. A public presentation of the participants’ current work and research at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele will complete the programme.

Open Call

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The massacre, hostage-taking and rocket attacks by Hamas have shaken us deeply. The grue-some attack on Israel on 7&nbsp;October left us stunned and initially lost for words.

The Berliner Festspiele on Current Events in Israel, Gaza and Germany