Willi Baumeister, Figure and segment of circle, 1923. Muzeum Sztuki w Lodzi
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Wilhelm Sasnal, Luther, 2003. Sammlung Goetz, Munich. © Courtesy Johnen Galerie, Berlin, Photo: Achim Kukulies, Düsseldorf
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Duchess Hedwig, unknown artist, ca. 1530. © Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung, Landshut, Burg Trausnitz, www.schloesser.bayern.de
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Andrzej Wróblewski, Execution, 1949. © Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu
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Miros³aw Ba³ka, St. Adalbert, 1987. © Muzeum Sztuki w £odzi, Foto: Piotr Tomczyk
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Günther Uecker, Splinter for Poland,1982. Sammlung Lenz Schönberg. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011, Foto: Simone Gänsheimer, München
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Cock of the Krakow marksmen’s guild,1564/1565. © Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa, Foto: Archiwum Muzeum Historycznego Miasta Krakowa
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Wilhelm Sasnal meets Lucas Cranach, precious Medieval manuscripts encounter Joseph Beuys’ key work Polentransport 1981. In the exhibition Side by Side: Poland – Germany. 1,000 Years of Art and History historical works and contemporary art combine to form a fascinating panorama. The unusual exhibition was conceived by the art historian and critic Anda Rottenberg—as former director of the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, she is deeply familiar with the contemporary art scene. Visitors to the Berlin Martin-Gropius-Bau repeatedly encounter works by Miroslaw Balka, Yael Bartana, Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter and Luc Tuymans which function as commentaries on historical events and provide a current perspective on the variegated history of the relationship between both countries.
The extensive educational program directed at school children and students was made possible by the Deutsche Bank Stiftung. The foundation has long been committed to Poland; together with the Zacheta, it called the Views Prize for Young Polish Art into being. The educational program further intensifies the cultural exchange between the two countries, thus fostering mutual understanding between Poland and Germany.
This transnational thinking repeatedly asserts itself in the exhibition—whether in the form of a historical figure such as the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who appears as the early embodiment of a European spirit, or the German–Polish network of artists of the 1920s who saw themselves as a part of the international avant-garde. Joseph Beuys is present with a work from the time of the Solidarnosc protests, Polentransport 1981: in the summer of 1981, he traveled to Lodz and presented the art museum there with his "Joseph Beuys Archiv," a box with prints, posters, and photographs, a gesture of a "symbolic transplantation" of his artistic ideas.
This fall, with Poland holding the 2011 EU Council presidency, Berlin will be standing under the sign of Polish art and culture. Concurrent with Side by Side, the Deutsche Guggenheim shows Pawel Althamer’s exhibition Almech. At the Akademie der Künste, in cooperation with the Polnisches Institut Berlin, Change of Perspective. Artistic Dialogues with Poland highlights Poland’s vital contribution to contemporary art in an extensive program that centers around two exhibitions: presented at the building on Hanseatenweg is a cinematic installation on the media pioneer Zbigniew Rybczynski in dialogue with the Hungarian avant-garde filmmaker Gábor Bódy. At Pariser Platz, Miroslaw Balka will be introduced to a wider public through his video works in the exhibition Fragment.
Side by Side: Poland—Germany. 1,000 Years of Art and History.
September 23, 2011 – January 9, 2012
Martin-Bropius-Bau, Berlin
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