Exhibitions 2016

Robert Doisneau Doisneau’s oeuvre is comprised of approximately 350,000 photographs, including professionally crafted shots and others which have the force and charisma of an artistic solitaire. The exhibition Robert Doisneau – Photographs: From Craft to Art provided an inside view of Doisneau’s work with around 100 selected photographs – most of them taken during the 1940s and 50s. It showed his fascination for the normal, for the petit bourgeois and for the melancholic and fragile.

Omer Fast is one of the most distinctive film and video artists of his generation. He creates narrations in his films that question the borders between one's own and media narratives and between current and historic events. His works address the friction between documentary and fiction. The Martin-Gropius-Bau showed seven of his projects at his first large solo exhibition in Berlin.

Based on selected distinguished national and international projects, the exhibition Building with Timber represented the state of the art in sustainable and modern timber architecture. The presentation spanned from spectacular projects by Toyo Ito, Shigeru Ban and Frei Otto to direction setting urban timber houses such as those by Kaden & Klingbeil in Berlin/Prenzlauer Berg, and upwards to the newest trends in high-rise buildings realized in timber. Plans, excerpts and photographs accompanied the large-sized models.

For decades, citizens in East and West Germany lived under different political systems, but they had many deep-rooted memories in common. The exhibition The British View: Germany – Memories of a Nation explored some of these memories on the basis of approximately 200 objects that originated during the last 600 years in Germany, and which are formative for culture, business and politics – past and present. They tell stories of great German achievements, of philosophers, poets and artists, and of historical events that have shaped the face of Germany today.

Pina Bausch is recognised as a pioneer of modern dance theatre and as one of the most influential choreographers of the twentieth century. The exhibition Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater was the first to present her work to a wider public. Taking its starting point in the workshop talk she gave in 2007 when she won the prestigious Kyoto Prize, the exhibition provided insights into her work. The focus was not only on the work in terms of staged performances but above all on the very foundations of the choreographer’s oeuvre, on her creative practice and on the key aspects and people that have accompanied and shaped her progress.

Gestaltung (design) is research, and research is Gestaltung. Using models, tools and images, the exhibition revealed the fundamental importance of creative processes for science and research for the first time. From the hand ax to the 3D-printed organ, from biomimetic materials to feeling prostheses, +ultra. knowledge & gestaltung presented the value of the insights and knowledge gained through the human transformations of nature, as well as their consequences.

Berenice Abbott is one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. She spent six decades taking pictures. The Martin-Gropius-Bau dedicated an exhibition featuring about 80 pictures to her. Her famous and iconic pictures from the Changing New York series, early portraits and her pioneering work as a scientific photographer were on show.

The exhibition Voices of Dissent: Art in the GDR 1976-1989 explored the relationships of dissident art and power in the GDR through a large number of representative works. Dissidence and critical distancing from the state apparatus took a great variety of artistic forms in the former socialist republic. This gathering of “other” art from the GDR asked how Germany’s recent history can be reappraised after decades of sterile East-West comparisons. Who are its real heroes?

Thomas Struth is internationally considered one of the most important artists of his generation. For the first time, his work was displayed at the Berliner Martin-Gropius-Bau in the exhibition Nature & Politics. The exhibition featured approximately 37 large-format photographs from the years 2005 through 2016. Industrial production plants, research laboratories and operating rooms, but also everyday architecture or theme parks: Thomas Struth’s pictures explore how human ambition and imagination become spatial, objective reality.

South African William Kentridge is one of the most internationally significant contemporary artists. He is not just a visual artist but also a filmmaker, director and a great raconteur. His comprehensive body of works has spanned several artistic disciplines for more than three decades. Berliner Festspiele presented his complete interdisciplinary oeuvre for the first time: at the Martin-Gropius-Bau and in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele during the Festival Foreign Affairs.

The Maya are one of the oldest cultures in the world. The exhibition The Maya – Language of Beauty was all about the magnificent artistic forms of expression of the Maya. With a collection of around 300 works of art, including many Mexican national treasures, it displayed the fundamental aspects of pre-Hispanic art: the body and the physique are central to this exhibition.

Isa Genzken is one of the most remarkable and radical artists of our time. She has earned international renown with her profound work. Her diverse works represent one of the most important contemporary stances of our time. Her oeuvre was comprehensively on show in Berlin for the first time. The exhibition Make Yourself Pretty! presented the broad spectrum of Genzken’s work, from her early films, drawings, ellipsoids and concrete sculptures to complex narrative collages and everyday items integrated into montages. The presentation highlighted topics such as modernity, the human body, portraits, city culture and architecture.

Lee Miller is one of the most versatile US-photographers and photo-journalists of the 20th century. She united opposed genres such as surrealism, fashion, portrait and travel photography, as well as war reporting into her repertoire of works. The exhibition Lee Miller – Photographs lead through the photographer’s diverse stations of life in New York, from Paris and Egypt up to Germany. Approximately 100 photographs that were exhibited illustrate Lee Miller’s life from different perspectives: as assistant, muse and partner of Man Ray in Paris in the 1930s; and as a pioneer of art photography and a photo-journalist during the Second World War.

Since Günter Brus (born 1938) first appeared in public as an “actionist” in 1965 with his “Wiener Spaziergang” (Vienna Walk), he has created a manifold œuvre. Zones of Disruption was the artist’s first exhibition in Berlin, even though Brus lived there for a long period, and influenced the art scene in the city significantly. The comprehensive exhibition lead through his complete oeuvre, but also focused on special aspects.

In addition to the art of the “primitives” (the term used for indigenous peoples at the time) and the “naives” (children and the mentally ill), the quest for original, unspoilt forms of expression in the 1920s and ‘30s gave rise to a third, often neglected source of inspiration for the development of modern art: prehistoric art, particularly the oldest human art tradition, rock art. Around 100 samples, including many large, wall-sized copies from the Frobenius Institute, as well as photographic and archive material, depict the epic history of rock-art documentation in European caves, the central Sahara, the savannahs of Zimbabwe, and the Australian outback. The exhibition Art of Prehistoric Times examined the impact of these never-before-seen images on modernity, and the manner in which they have inspired artists.