HIGHLIGHTS
EXHIBITION Sep 12, 2018 — Feb 28, 2019
Exhibition Text
Kicken Berlin’s fall exhibition, entitled Highlights, shows a selection of iconic photographs of the twentieth century in a dialogue of forms and motifs.
The camera makes visible things otherwise hidden to the human eye. A close-up of a butterfly wing and split-second shots of seagulls in flight open up fascinating perspectives into the nature of things. Organic forms and serial structures inspired the artists of Neues Sehen and Neue Sachlichkeit, such as László Moholy-Nagy, Horacio Coppola and Ernst Fuhrmann’s Folkwang-Auriga Verlag.
Modernism’s new modes of seeing led to the abstractions in Moholy-Nagy’s and Marta Hoepffner’s photograms, echos of which can be heard in Sigmar Polke’s playful photographic explorations of the world as well. The Bauhaus was a hotbed of the Neues Sehen movement, unifying the various experimental perspectives of Gertrud Arndt, Erich Collein and Umbo, among others. This visual language — of cropping and alienation — continues to influence artists today, such as in the work of Jitka Hanzlová.
A selection of portraits distills the history of photography in the twentieth century. Looking modernism in the face is taken literally here, such as in the intense portrait of painter Otto Dix by Hugo Erfurth, rendered in the finest detail. Helmar Lerski modelled the protagonists in Köpfe des Alltags (Everyday Heads) with light like sculptures, and Cologne artist Heinrich Hoerle looks out at us from an image from August Sander’s major typological social study, Menschen des 20. Jahrhundert (People of the Twentieth Century). Moholy-Nagy’s portrait of Ellen Frank and Ruth mit Maske (Ruth with Mask) by Umbo are two icons of Neues Sehen. Aenne Biermann and Erwin Blumenfeld, Grit Kallin-Fischer, Heinrich Kühn, Werner Rohde and Otto Steinert round out the survey. Works by Heinrich Riebesehl and Sibylle Bergemann extend the shows reach into the 1970s. (Carolin Förster)
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Artists
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Josef Albers
1888–1976
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Gertrud Arndt
1903–2000
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Sibylle Bergemann
1941–2010
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Aenne Biermann
1898–1933
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Erwin Blumenfeld
1897–1969
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Paul Citroen
1896–1983
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Erich Consemüller
1902–1957
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Horacio Coppola
1906–2012
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Hugo Erfurth
1874–1948
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Folkwang Auriga Verlag & Archiv
1921–1935
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Ernst Fuhrmann
1886–1956
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WALTER FUNKAT
1906–2006
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Jaromír Funke
1896–1945
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André Gelpke
*1947
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Jitka Hanzlová
*1958
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Marta Hoepffner
1912–2000
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Grit Kallin-Fischer
1897–1973
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Rudolf Koppitz
1884–1936
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August Kreyenkamp
1875–1950
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Heinrich Kühn
1866–1944
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Helmar Lerski
1871–1956
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Man Ray
1890–1976
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László Moholy-Nagy
1895–1946
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Floris M. Neusüss
1937–2020
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Sigmar Polke
1941–2010
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Heinrich Riebesehl
1938–2010
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Werner Rohde
1906–1990
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August Sander
1876–1964
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Rudolf Schwarzkogler
1940–1969
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Otto Steinert
1915–1978
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UMBO
1902–1980
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Vernacular Anonymous