Die ASSO und die revolutionäre bildende Kunst der 20er Jahre
(The Asso and the revolutionary visual arts of the 1920s)
September 28 - October 31, 1971
The exhibition Die Asso und die Revolutionäre Bildende Kunst der 20er Jahre (The Asso [Association of Revolutionary Artists] and the Revolutionary Visual Arts of the Nineteen-Twenties) traveled from Nuremberg to Kunstverein München. In Nuremberg, it had been installed by the party executive of the DKP (German Communist Party) opposite the Germanisches Nationalmuseum as a counterpoint to the “year of Dürer” celebrated there on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Albrecht Dürer’s birth. The catalogue’s preface reads: “No worker or farmer is represented in the official curatorship of the ‘year of Dürer’ in 1971, but Franz-Josef Strauß is. Who is seriously interested in credibly celebrating the 500th birthday of one of the most progressive personalities of his time with this reactionary warmonger and mouthpiece of the arms industry? [...] In the interest of these goals, the party of the working class of the Federal Republic, the DKP, is determined to lead the struggle against monopoly capital, not least on the terrain of cultural politics [...] Artists are breaking out of the bourgeois ivory tower toward social reality. This development may be slowed down by the ruling class’s various maneuvers to divert and repurpose it, but it cannot be stopped. The cutting contradictions of the outlived late-capitalist system are emerging too obviously, time and again, in all areas of society—despite the greatest efforts on the part of the rulers to manipulate these contradictions away.”
October 5, October 12, October 19, October 26
Lectures:
Introduction to a Marxist Perspective on Art, Dr. R. Hiepe
Artist and Society, Dr. Olbricht (GDR)
Culture and its Anti-imperialist Fight, Guido Zingerl
The Asso, Dr. Ulrich Kuhirt (GDR)
Political Art in the FRG – Today (discussion based on images)
September 30, 8pm
Political evening
Group “team“ - Theater K
Sati(e)re-Schutz-Verein.Münchner Songgruppe
Fig:
[1] Catalog cover of the Munich exhibition 1971, Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V.
[2] Original catalog cover, Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V.
[3] Exhibition flyer 1971, Courtesy Kunstverein München e.V.
[4] Alice Lex-Nerlinger: Rich and Poor (1931)