"The Shape of Freedom: International Abstraction after 1945", Museum Barberini, Potsdam, 2022. (original) (raw)

https://www.museum-barberini.de/en/ausstellungen/4785/the-shape-of-freedom-international-abstraction-after-1945 The Second World War marked a turning point in the development of modern painting. Both in the US and in Western Europe, a younger generation of artists turned their backs on the dominant styles of the interwar period: Instead of figurative representation or geometric abstraction, painters in the orbit of Abstract Expressionism in the US and Art Informel in Western Europe pursued a radically impulsive approach to form, color, and material. As an expression of individual freedom, the spontaneous painterly gesture gained symbolic significance. Large-scale color-field paintings created a meditative space for ruminating the fundamental questions of human existence. The exhibition The Shape of Freedom examines the creative interplay between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel in transatlantic exchange and dialogue, from the mid-1940s to the end of the Cold War. It includes more than ninety works by around fifty artists, amongst them Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, K. O. Götz, Lee Krasner, Georges Mathieu, Joan Mitchell, Ernst-Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Judit Reigl, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. The over thirty international lenders include the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, the Museo nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The exhibition is organized by the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, and the Albertina Modern, Vienna, with generous support from the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève.