Extreme Tension: Art between Politics and Society 1945 – 2000

Hardly any other era was so marked by division, rupture and transformation as the period after the Second World War. In light of this, the Neue Nationalgalerie has consciously chosen the title Extreme Tension for the upcoming presentation of its postwar collection.

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  Wolfgang Mattheuer, Bratsker Landschaft, Detail, 1967

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  Barnett Newman: Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV, 1969/70

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  Christo und Jeanne-Claude – Verpackte 1961 Volkswagen Käfer Limousine, 1963-2014, Privatsammlung

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  Katharina Sieverding, Schlachtfeld Deutschland, XI/78, 1978

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Taking the radical performance Zerreißprobe (Stress Test) by Günter Brus as its point of departure, the Neue Nationalgalerie will show how dramatically postwar art was shaped by the tensions that existed between politics and society.

The presentation will encompass key works from West and East Germany, Western Europe and the USA, and unpacks central artistic and societal themes from the twentieth century, including realism and abstraction, politics and society, everyday life and pop culture, feminism, and nature and ecology. The works on display will come from the art informel movement and American colour field painting, from pop art and minimalism, as well as the conceptual art of artists like Josef Albers, Joseph Beuys, Francis Bacon, Lee Bontecou, Rebecca Horn, Valie Export, Bruce Naumann, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Louise Nevelson, Gerhard Richter, Bridget Riley and Willi Sitte. The collection will be supplemented by a number of works and artists not yet represented in the collection.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's “Wrapped VW Beetle” the collection presentation

To mark the 30th anniversary of the “Wrapped Reichstag”, from June 11, 2025, the Neue Nationalgalerie will be showing "Zerreißprobe. Art between Politics and Society. Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945 - 2000“, another iconic work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude: the ”Wrapped 1961 Volkswagen Beetle Saloon.“ The wrapped Volkswagen can be seen in the exhibition chapter ”A Better Life", which shows how artists from the 1960s and 1970s looked at the different realities of life in divided Germany and Europe with irony, attention to detail and criticism - at a world that was strongly influenced by political systems, consumer culture and the media at the time. With a “Volkswagen” in the ‘Nationalgalerie’, two “images of Germany” now also meet in a productive way, an iconic German car that has written world history and a museum that is also linked to Germany's cultural history in a special way.

Curated by Joachim Jäger, Marta Smolińska and Maike Steinkamp

A special exhibition by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Runtime: from November 2023

Takes place here:

• Neue Nationalgalerie

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