Berlinale 2016: Films that address War

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Warning & Temptation – The Pictorial Worlds of War of Käthe Kollwitz and Kata Legrady (Berlin)

From 30 June until 9 November 2014, Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Berlin presents the exhibition Warning and Temptation – The Pictorial Worlds of War of Käthe Kollwitz and Kata Legrady. Two very different artists and their individual examination of war are contrasted with each other; on one hand, the pacifist works of Käthe Kollwitz that have not lost their impact and timelessness over many decades; and on the other hand, the direct and colourful works by Kata Legrady, born in 1974 in Hungary, whose contemporary approach addresses the propagandistic promises of war. In addition, the exhibition will present selected pupil’s works that mainly deal with Käthe Kollwitz as mother and grandmother, who has lost her son Peter during the First World War, and her grandson Peter during the Second World War. Continue reading “Warning & Temptation – The Pictorial Worlds of War of Käthe Kollwitz and Kata Legrady (Berlin)”

Thomas Geve: “There are No Children Here” (Cologne)

From 9 May to 3 August 2014, the NS-Dokumentationszentrum Köln (Nationalsocialism Documentation Centre Cologne, NSDOK) presents the special exhibition “Es gibt hier keine Kinder” – Auschwitz, Groß-Rosen, Buchenwald (“There are no children here”). After his liberation from KZ BuchenwaldThomas Geve, then 15 years of age, drew his memories of life in concentration camps. Proximity to death and the constant subjection to the guards are central to the documentary drawings; equally, they are a testimony of a youth’s will to survive. The NSDOK exhibition shows 75 of his drawings that since 1985 are part of the Yad Vashem collections in Jerusalem

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“No Escape” – Exhibition about the Graphic Novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Osnabrück)

From 27 April until 27 July 2014, the exhibition “Kein Entkommen” (No Escape) about the  graphic novel “Im Westen nichts Neues” (All Quiet on the Western Front) by Peter Eickmeyer will be shown at the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Centre in Osnabrück. In three years’ time, the Melle-based artist made his adaption of Erich Maria Remarque’s world-famous novel, a cornerstone of addressing the First World War in literature. The exhibition includes original drawings from the graphic novel and delivers insight into its making.

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grounded/airborne (Kleine Galerie, Torgau)

Usually, wartist.org contains articles about exhibitions of other artists, movies, galleries and museums. Today, however, we have the pleasure to write on our own issues: ausgebildete Photographer Martin Bayer (educated at Lette-Verein Berlin) presents from 28 February to 10 April 2014 his exhibition grounded/airborne at Kleine Galerie (Torgauer Kunst- und Kulturverein “Johann Kentmann” e.V.). The photos from his series grounded show details of retired military planes; they will be historically commented by some aerial pictures from the First World War. Grounded addresses the medial and artistic aestheticisation of weapons, while both the clear assignment of the pictured objects to historic events and the alleged simple classification into “friend” and “enemy” become desintegrated.

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Zwischen Kaiserwetter und Donnergrollen (Hanover)

From 20 October 2013 until 19 January 2014, the “Wilhelm Busch – Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst” (German museum of caricature and the art of drawing, named after Wilhelm Busch) in Hanover will present the exhibition “Zwischen Kaiserwetter und Donnergrollen – Die wilhelminische Epoche im Spiegel des Simplicissimus von 1896 bis 1914” (between “Kaiserwetter” (an old expression for splendid weather) and rolling thunder – the Wilhelmine era in the mirror of Simplicissimus between 1896 and 1914). Since its foundation in 1896, the satiric magazine “Simplicissimus” held the proverbial mirror up to the German society that in the years before the First World War was shaped by domestic and international crises and societal, cultural and technological changes. The exhibition centres around originals of leading satiric fin-de-siècle artists such as Thomas Theodor Heine, Eduard Thöny, Olaf Gulbransson, Bruno Paul, Karl Arnold, Rudolf Wilke, Wilhelm Schulz and Ferdinand von Rezniček. Continue reading “Zwischen Kaiserwetter und Donnergrollen (Hanover)”

Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War (Imperial War Museum North, Manchester)

From 12 October 2013 until 23 February 2014, the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester presents the exhibition “Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War”, containing works of more than 40 contemporary artists about war in our time. The IWM’s huge and diverse collection could provide all the more than 70 works that have been made sinde the Gulf War of 1990/91. Among others, Steve McQueen, Frauke Eigen, Paul Seawright, Rasheed Araeen and Willie Doherty take part in this exhibition.

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Gavrilo Princip (Galerie im Weltecho, Chemnitz)

From 7 September until 4 October 2013, the gallery at Weltecho in Chemnitz presents the video installation “Gavrilo Princip” by the two Czech artists Jana Morkovska and Olga Alia Krulisova. In their work, they address the historic events of the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent  Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, in which his wife was killed, too. This assassination is regarded as trigger for a chain of events that led to the First World War.

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