Berlin 1989

One of the most eagerly-awaited anniversaries of 2019, 9 November will mark thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. From 12 October 2019 to 19 January 2020, Gallerie d’Italia in Naples will be hosting the Berlin 1989 exhibition, an insight into the ferment that swept Germany’s art scene in the 1980s.

German painting before and after the Wall

In the 1980s German painting was asserting itself across the globe, taking on the moniker of Neo-Expressionism; its exponents were known as Neue Wilden, (“New Wild Ones”), underlining a certain brutality of the painting in the violent brushwork and a strong narrative foundation.

What soon emerged was a group of Berlin-based painters, among them Rainer Fetting, Helmut Middendorf and Bernd Zimmer, who in 1977 had opened the Galerie am Mortizplatz in Kreuzberg, a self-managed space; their rebel painting was inspired by what was going on in the media, by rock music and punk culture as well as political and artistic movements, mixing high and low-brow culture in a thoroughly postmodern context. This was young and cult art, which would soon leave the fringe scene to win over the art market, galleries and museums.

Some artists were already world-famous in the early 1980s, with Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer carving out an important role in art history. Next came the younger vanguard, represented by Rainer Fetting, Helmut Middendorf, Bernd Zimmer, Karl Horst Hödicke, Markus Lüpertz, A.R. Penck, Martin Disler, Siegfried Anzinger and Albert Oehlen.

Following Le mille luci di New York in 2017 and London Shadow in 2018, Berlin 1989 concludes the triad of exhibitions curated by Luca Beatrice, focusing on the cities that changed the history of art and more in the late 20th century: the aesthetic revolution going on in Berlin also acted as a catalyst for social revolution.