Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [51]
Anselm Kiefer remains a key figure in the arts scene, recognised in 2008 when he was awarded the German Book Trade Peace Prize (Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels). Jörg Immendorff (1945–2007) – like Kiefer, he has also worked in stage design and was one of Beuys’ students – has become one of Germany’s most collectable artists.
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‘Rubble in itself is the future. Because everything that is passes.’
ANSELM KIEFER
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Two contemporary icons of German painting are Gerhard Richter (b 1932) and Sigmar Polke (b 1941). Richter, who was born in Dresden and fled to West Germany in the early 1960s, recently completed a major new work in Cologne’s cathedral Click here – a vast stained-glass window consisting of 11,500 mesmerising square pieces. Polke, along with Richter and others, relied heavily on pop art and what they dubbed ‘capitalist realism’ – which they used to describe a counterbalance in the West to socialist realism. The influence of the two is as immeasurable as the prices their works command at auctions today. The Museum Ludwig in Cologne is where you can see a good range of Polke’s works.
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For a comprehensive low-down of Germany’s contemporary art scene and events, see www.art-in.de (in German).
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Bavarian Florian Thomas (b 1966) is one of a new generation of Germany’s contemporary artists who owe much to the ground-breaking work of Richter and Polke. His work can be found in the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. His Lieber Onkel Dieter! (Dear Uncle Dieter!) and Arusha are highlights. In the same museum are works by Eberhard Havekost (b 1967), who uses digitally reworked images as the basis for some of his photorealist pictures – often playing dramatically with light and shadow. Works by Sorb sculptor and painter Georg Baselitz (b 1938) are other highlights of the Museum Frieder Burda. Baselitz was tossed out of art school in the GDR for his artistic provocations, only to have West German authorities confiscate works from his first exhibition there. Take a look at his Die Grosse Nacht im Eimer (Big Night Down the Drain), depicting a masturbating figure, and you can see – if not quite understand – why.
Almost as highly prized by collectors and galleries as Richter and Polke, but from a younger generation, Rosemarie Trockel (b 1952) received the highly regarded Düsseldorf Art Prize in 2009 for her works. Her diverse and experimental works span drawings, sculpture, painting and video art. In Leipzig the Neue Leipziger Schule (New Leipzig School) of artists has emerged recently, achieving success at home and abroad, and includes painters such as Neo Rauch (b 1960).
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Love thy car – and job: Germany has about 41 million cars, which is an average of one car for every two inhabitants. One in eight jobs in Germany is dependent on the car industry.
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The Neue Sammlung permanent collections of the double banger Neues Museum in Nuremberg and Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich are not to be missed as stations on the contemporary art and design circuit; changing exhibitions have ranged from jewellery through to GDR art-poster design, and from Ikea furniture design through to a retrospective of covers from the magazine Der Spiegel.
Photography is another area where Germany excels. In the 1920s and 1930s, German photography took two very different directions. Influenced by the Hungarian László Maholy-Nagy, some photographers adopted a playful approach to light, figure, form and how they developed the resulting images in the darkroom. The other direction was Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), based on a documentary-style approach and the creation of archetypes that help us understand the world. The three main protagonists