Renato Guttuso

31 May - 30 June 1972

After stops at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris and the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Berlin, the exhibition was shown in a scaled-down form at the Kunstverein München. It includes early paintings from 1940 to 1942 and works from the previous seven years. "Guttuso's committed realism ('the painter is questioned by the world, he must answer') is not, however, one of mere depiction of predetermined content from the class-struggle position. As in 'Crucifixion', traditional pictorial ideas are charged with current political reference, symbolic elements are incorporated: Revolvers, skulls, the skeletonized ram's head referring to the Spanish Civil War, the flaming red sky penetrating through the studio window; art historical allusions appear as in 'Triumph of War' (1966); fragments of reality are mounted as quotations as in the enormous 'Wall Newspaper' from the Ludwig Collection, which was also supposed to come to Munich and then never did." (from: "Anklage gegen die Gewalt" by Hans Krieger)