MENSCH BERLIN in Vienna
The continuation of the exhibition at the renowned Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien is another highlight of the anniversary year. From 9 July to 31 August 2025, MENSCH BERLIN will be on display in the Austrian capital, taking the cultural heritage of this unique collection beyond the borders of Germany.
The Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank and the Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank are celebrating their 40th anniversary. Founded in 1985 in Berlin (West), the collection took on a special position in the West German cultural scene due to its initial focus on GDR art.
Under the leitmotif „Bilder vom Menschen – Bilder für Menschen“ (“Images of People – Images for People”), later expanded to include Berlin cityscapes, the founders built up one of the most important collections of figurative art of the post-war period.
With reunification, the ratio of East and West German art began to equalise. Today, the collection consists of over 1,500 works by around 200 artists. The extraordinary profile of the collection offers the opportunity to compare artistic creation in Berlin and neighbouring regions before and after the fall of the Wall.
The anniversary exhibition MENSCH BERLIN traces this development and builds a bridge from the past to the present. For example, Rainer Fettings’ gloomy depictions of the Berlin Wall and Konrad Knebel’s sober, melancholy tenement facades convey impressions of a divided city, while more recent positions such as the luminous cityscapes by Roland Nicolaus and Carsten Kaufhold show how the perspective on Berlin has changed.
During its run in Berlin, from 20 February to 22 June 2025, the exhibition will change again and again. By regularly changing the works, you will not only experience the highlights of the collection at the Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank, but also rarely shown works. Gain new insights with every visit and look forward to exciting new discoveries and rediscoveries.
The exhibition includes works by:
Gerhard Altenbourg, Annemirl Bauer, Norbert Bisky, Claudia Busching, Rainer Fetting, Ellen Fuhr, Angela Hampel, K. H. Hödicke, Ingeborg Hunzinger, Klaus Killisch, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Harald Metzkes, Cornelia Schleime, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Werner Tübke, Via Lewandowsky, Barbara Quandt and many many more.
November 9, 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To mark the occasion, from November 8th, 2024 to March 2nd, 2025 the Stiftung KUNSTFORUM der Berliner Volksbank gGmbH and the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, die Kulturstiftung der Berliner Sparkasse, im Max-Liebermann-Haus, are joining forces to explore the topic of the division of Berlin and the view of the Wall from East and West in art. The exhibition Die Mauer: vorher, nachher, Ost und West (The Wall: before, after, East and West) examines artistic positions from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s, focussing on the period of upheaval around 1989/90. How did artists from East and West Germany depict and process the Wall in their works? What presence and significance does it have in the artworks of the time?
November 9, 2024 marks the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall. To mark this occasion, the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, die Kulturstiftung der Berliner Sparkasse, and the Stiftung KUNSTFORUM der Berliner Volksbank gGmbH invite you to a special exhibition from November 8, 2024 to March 2, 2025. Under the title Die Mauer: vorher, nachher, Ost und West (The Wall: before, after, East and West), artistic positions from the period around reunification in 1989/90 will be presented.
The exhibition presents works from the Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank, which was founded in 1985. The focus of the collection is on realistic positions in German post-war art, particularly by artists from Berlin and East Germany. Complementary loans deepen the theme of the exhibition.
The Wall: before, after, East and West illuminates the Berlin Wall from two perspectives: temporally and geographically. The Wall is viewed before and after the opening; different views from East and West, from the GDR and the FRG, are brought together. This provides a multi-layered insight into a time of upheaval and new beginnings.
On display are works by renowned artists such as Annemirl Bauer, Manfred Butzmann, Rainer Fetting, Ellen Fuhr and many more. While the depiction of the Wall was often taboo in the GDR and limited to private, small-format works, West Berlin artists were able to take up the subject more freely and in large formats. The exhibition shows how these different conditions are reflected in the works and what role the Wall played in the art of this period.
The Max Liebermann Haus, home of the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, is a particularly symbolic location for this exhibition. Located right next to the Brandenburg Gate, it was once a border area and the scene of the division of Germany. Today it is a place of remembrance and encounter – and therefore the ideal venue for this exhibition. The Stiftung Brandenburger Tor itself is also closely linked to the theme: The Brandenburg Gate, which gives the foundation its name, is a symbol of freedom and tolerance, of the unity of Germany and Berlin and of the opening between East and West. From this, the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor derives its mission to emphasize and strengthen the importance of culture for our civil society.
The exhibition Globale Räume für radikale Solidarität (Global Spaces for Radical Solidarity), which runs from August 8 to October 2, 2024 at the Münzenberg Forum Berlin at Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, draws attention to Willi Münzenberg’s (1889 – 1940) work. He is a key figure for understanding the signatures of the 20th century and for the impulses, debates, overcoming and challenges at the beginning of the 21st century. His role in the establishment and work of the largest proletarian solidarity organization of the 20th century, Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH) (International Workers’ Aid), is particularly significant. In addition, his relevance to the fight against war, nationalism, fascism and the break with Stalinism, as well as its reverberations into the 21st century, is undisputed. Willi Münzenberg advocates the self-empowerment of people through enlightenment, education and organization in global spaces in order to achieve social justice and democratization.
The work “Bildnis Willi Münzenberg (zu Peter Weiss: Die Ästhetik des Widerstands)“ from 1987 by Hubertus Giebe from the Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank will be shown in the exhibition.
The exhibition Market Makers, which runs from 5 to 7 October 2023 at Atelier Knecht/Wendelin at Leipziger Straße 63 in Berlin, illuminates the intricate relationship between art, finance and culture and seeks to explore the economic dynamics behind it.
Artworks from the Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank are combined with artworks complemented by NFTs (non-fungible tokens), referencing value creation, economic mechanisms, and networked interactions.
The exhibition seeks to go beyond the traditional notion of art by exploring exchanges within artworks and delving into the myths surrounding both historical and contemporary markets. It aims to shed light on the complexities of current tensions between cryptocurrencies, decentralised finance (DeFi), banks and traditional financial mechanisms.
Market Makers addresses the inherent discrepancy within existing art criticism that capital relations are not fully acknowledged in art, but the meaning of art as well as its production plays a central role.
The Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank plays a central role in this exhibition, because with a focus on art from Berlin and the region of Brandenburg, the collection particularly emphasizes the artistic movements of the 1980s to 1990s. The Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank holds a position as one of the pioneering collections that actively sought to collect, promote and provide a certain accessibility for these artists and works to be perceived in a broader market.
The exhibition will include workshops and educational programs to sustainably promote discussions on this topic.
A comprehensive retrospective of the Berlin painter Carsten Kaufhold (1967 – 2022) will be shown at Berlin’s Schloss Britz from 02.06.2023 to 03.09.2023. After studying at the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin, Kaufhold was initially active as a musician. From 2002 onwards, he devoted himself primarily to painting and found his subject in the cityscape. In 2017, he received the Neukölln Art Prize.
Kaufhold portrayed his home city of Berlin in brightly lit well structured compositions, whereby the focus of his work was not on the capital’s well known sights. Rather, the painter preferred to direct his gaze to the marginalised and off-the-beaten-track areas: typical Berlin street alignments and corners, commercial courtyards, firewalls and peripheral areas. It is above all these quiet urban places, often bathed in the bright glow of the sun, to which the artist wants to direct the viewer. The exhibition brings together around 50 paintings and drawings that take into account all of the painter’s major creative phases.
The exhibition from 23.10.2022 till 26.03.2023 at the Barlach Kunstmuseum Wedel is dedicated to the so-called “Neuen Wilden”, the young generation of German artists who revived figurative painting in the early 1980s. Expression instead of intellect, pictoriality and narrative instead of minimalism – in the works of the “Neuen Wilden” one can sense a departure into the spheres of individual feeling and self-expression.
The original leitmotif of the Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank has always been “Pictures of people – pictures for people”. As the main lender of this exhibition, it presents numerous positions of the “Neuen Wilden”, which form an ideal fund for the works of a generation of artists whose success story has meanwhile become an art-historical myth.
Among others, works by Elvira Bach, Luciano CasteIli, Christa Dichgans, Hartwig Ebersbach, Rainer Fetting, FRANEK, Dieter Hacker, Martin Heinig, Thomas Hornemann, Karl-Horst Hödicke, Brian Kelly, Bernd Koberling, Markus Lüpertz, Helmut Middendorf, A.R. Penck, Barbara Quandt, Salomé and Bernd Zimmer are represented.
The exhibition at the Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus (Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst) will show works by 18 female artists from the GDR from 18 December 2022 to 19 February 2023 with 20 loans from the Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank.
In the 1980s, many female artists in the GDR drew attention to themselves by expressing changed perspectives of art in critical observations of social conditions. The questioning of state policies as well as the offensively formulated attitude towards the autonomy of the artist subject and her work were expressed. Women artists focused on the female body, often their own. They developed playful and at the same time pointed pictorial reflections of female identities and their self-staging.
Tina Bara, Annemirl Bauer, Ellen Fuhr, Angela Hampel, Ingrid Hartmetz, Sabine Herrmann, Uta Hünniger, Christa Jeitner, Helga Paris, Núria Quevedo, Christine Schlegel, Cornelia Schleime, Gabriele Stötzer, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Ulla Walter, Karla Woisnitza, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt and Doris Ziegler are the artists on show.
After stops in Aschaffenburg and Erfurt, the Kunsthalle Rostock is showing the exhibition “Wolfgang Mattheuer und Markus Matthias Krüger. Unter blauen Himmeln”. The show focuses on the landscape painting of the two artists.
Committed to the Romantic tradition as much as to critical realism, Mattheuer (1927 – 2004) created an extensive body of work in landscape painting. He is one of the “fathers” of the Leipzig School. In the exhibition, he meets the atmospheric landscapes of the Leipzig painter Markus Matthias Krüger (*1981), whose magical realism questions the ideal landscape image.
From 31.07. till 06.11.2022 the exhibition “Wolfgang Mattheuer und Markus Matthias Krüger. Unter blauen Himmeln” will be shown in the Angermuseum Erfurt after the first presentation in Aschaffenburg. More than a generation apart, both Wolfgang Mattheuer as a representative of the early “Leipzig School” and Markus Matthias Krüger are exponents of a style of painting rooted in Romanticism. Atmospheric images and motifs of longing characterize the art of the two painters whose landscape paintings are the subject of the exhibition.
From 26.3. to 10.7.2022 the Kunsthalle Jesuitenkirche – Museen der Stadt Aschaffenburg is showing the exhibition “Wolfgang Mattheuer und Markus Matthias Krüger. Unter blauen Himmeln.” Among the so-called “fathers of the Leipzig School”, Mattheuer represented the role of the critic, as a keen observer of a landscape that has been changing due to urban sprawl, particularly since the 1970s. Markus Matthias Krüger also stages a mostly deceptive idyll in the manner of the old masters with an almost brilliant, “quiet” pictorial aesthetic. The exhibition is a contribution to the Aschaffenburg and at the same time Lower Franconian culture days on the subject of [art] [culture] [climate] from 30.6. until 10.7.2022. Wolfgang Mattheuer’s painting “Sonnenstrasse II” from 1990 was loaned to this exhibition from the Kunstsammlung der Berliner Volksbank.