Die 80er Jahre in der Malerei in Deutschland

The 80ies in German Painting

All of a sudden, painting becomes prominent in Germany in the 80ies, critics talk about a „hunger for painting“ and think the enthousiasm is exaggerated. While the young generation of artists is welcome elsewhere and the art travels to many countries, older artists still hang on to Ardono‘s claim that after the holocaust, realistic painting is impossible as an expression. Regarding Hitler‘s favorite art and the monstrous expression in works of that period, this is foremost a warning to break with fascist art.

During the cold war, especially after the construction of the Berlin wall, in 1961, a politically correct realistic style to paint developes in the East of Germany, while the West keeps to Adorno‘s abstract expression. Everywhere young artists are bored by that restriction, especially in Berlin, where after thirteen years of Nazi regime and world war two there is a vivid exchange with modern art at the Academy of Arts. Its first director, the internationally known artist Karl Hofer, has a hard time defending expressionist and realistic tendencies along with abstract expressionism at the same time and tries to bring diversity back to modern art education. Under his directorship the American Abstract expressionists are brought to an exhibition at the Art School. Here Baseltz discovers Guston, Lüpertz Pollock, both with later works that rediscover figuration. The idea is borne, not to seperate abstraction and figuration anymore, but to express both ways of thinking in one painting.

Especially Karl- Horst Hödicke, after a one year stipend to New York in 1968, becomes a young professor at the art school, ten years younger than his disciples, leads the way and a free style is born in the ateliers of his scolars.