Out at 9:45 to Nordbahnhof and by S-bahn down to Potsdamer Platz. My foot was hurting after walking too far in the wrong shoes yesterday, so I took an M85 bus for a couple of stops to the Neue Nationalgalerie. Arrived at 10:15.
'Divided Heaven: 1945-1968' is the second half of the gallery's collection; I saw the first half last July. As expected there is much I didn't understand, but the gallery has made an excellent job of trying to explain the development of art during the period, and the hanging – as before – is excellent. Many groupings of artists promoting (or often rejecting) some ideal or other, which mostly only lasted a short time. I hadn't appreciated how much New York contributed to the art scene. A nice side gallery of 20 prints by sculptor Giacometti, a long-time favourite.
I have almost indecipherable notes (I can't write standing up) recording some of the images and artists that interested or moved me: Wols ('Peinture', the art of painting, 'Composition Jaune'); Hartung (sculpture); Wilhelm Lachnit ('Mannequin'); Ehmsen (was a soldier in WWI and WWII: 'Auschwitz'); Karl Hofer ('Two Girls on a Hill'). 1948-1951 COBRA group: Appel, Zimmer, Sturm; admired Debuffet. 1951 Art Informel: Karl Otto Götz in Germany. Late 1950s the ZERO group: Vasarely, Sykora, Heinz Mack. The 1966 New York exhibition 'Primary Structures' established a distance from classical sculpture and painting, later becomes Minimalism.
I came out of the gallery after two and a quarter hours at 12:30 and went straight into the very civilised café for a glass of one of their huge selection of speciality teas, then walked across to the Kunstbibliotek (Art Library) for the exhibition of graphics by Dodo.
Born 1907 in Berlin as Dörte Clara Wolff, Dodo started as a freelance fashion illustrator in 1926 and went on to a short but sharply observed period working for the satirical magazine ULK. Very Art Deco in the early days, with lovely clean lines, and always stylish; her later personal work less defined. But a troubled life. An excellent retrospective of around 120 works.
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