DEICHTORHALLEN
HALL FOR CURRENT ARTAPRIL 1 - JULY 12, 2015

On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg are showing the large-scale exhibition "Picasso in Contemporary Art". As the opening presentation in the lavishly renovated and modernized hall for current art, the show is dedicated to the overwhelming spectrum of modern and contemporary artistic perspectives on Picasso. Around 200 loans from 90 international artists from Tate, London or the Center Pompidou, Paris, among others, revolve around Picasso and its consequences for art, without showing a single Picasso. Between admiration, intellectual assimilation and reinterpretation, the works of well-known artists such as Georg Baselitz, Marlene Dumas, Martin Kippenberger, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Longo and Robert Motherwell make the topicality of Picasso's work clear.

Picasso embodies the art of the 20th century like no other artist. He was admired, but also hated, people celebrated, studied and copied him. His painting and his artistic individualism have not worn out to this day. All of the artists selected for the exhibition are united by their will to measure themselves against Picasso and his work. New, partially hidden or even unexpected Picasso quotes make the image of his reception appear increasingly differentiated. Picasso's biography, located between experimentation with form, gender struggle and world politics, between intoxicating sensual feasts and tragedy, offers almost collective memories of those facets that artists still associate with Picasso and that play a role in the creation of their works.

All of Picasso's great subjects and creative phases appear again in the exhibition as an artistic reception: the blue period and the related topics such as loneliness, despair and social misery, but also livelier motifs from the pink period such as the harlequin. In addition, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" as the first cubist painting and Picasso's works from the twenties and thirties, in which he combined the strict cubist elements with wide, smooth and rounded curves, have stimulated reactions from artists for generations. Picasso's aggressive deformations, which culminated in the accusatory anti-war image »Guernica«, led to a spectacular series of political images from the second half of the 20th century until today. In the exhibition there are six monumental Guernica interpretations alone,

Another focus of the exhibition is the perception of Picasso by internationally leading artists such as Cindy Sherman, Maria Lassnig, Sophie Calle and Hanne Darboven. Topics such as “Picasso and German Art” or the way American appropriation art deals with Picasso's oeuvre are also dealt with. The exhibition "Picasso in Contemporary Art" thus sheds light on the change in today's global artistic reception of Picasso's works. The exhibition begins with works from the 1930s by Brassai, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erwin Blumenfeld, but the focus of the exhibition is on the last 50 years of artistic creation with works by Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Jasper Johns.

The great sensuality and sheer inexhaustible power of imagination, the span of Picasso's work between abstraction and figure, artistic creativity and political accusation challenge all of these artists to particularly exciting dialogues with the Picasso phenomenon.

ARTISTS OF THE EXHIBITION
DIA AL-AZZAWI / ART & LANGUAGE / KADER ATTIA / DONALD BAECHLER / GEORG BASELITZ / WALEAD BESHTY / MIKE BIDLO / ERWIN BLUMENFELD / BRASSAÏ / SOPHIE CALLE / HENRI CARTIER-BRESSONTM / MAURIZDIO / CATIELRICKT CAELAN / HANNE DARBOVEN / FOLKERT DE JONG / RINEKE DIJKSTRA / ROBERT DOISNEAU / MARLENE DUMAS / DAVID DOUGLAS DUNCAN / HANS-PETER FELDMANN / FRITZ FENZL / GELATIN / AMJAD GHANNAM / KHALEDARL HOURANI / OTTO FELIX / GRODHELIN / RODZRA/ RICHARD HAMILTON / RACHEL HARRISON / RICHARD HAWKINS / ANTON HENNING / DAVID HOCKNEY / THOMAS HOUSEAGO / GARY HUME / JAY Z / JASPER JOHNS / ASGER JORN / BIRGIT JÜRGENSSEN / MARTIN KIPPENBERGER / ERNSTE LUDERAN / GUILLCA KIRC MARIA LASSNIG / LOUISE LAWLER / ROY LICHTENSTEIN / ROBERT LONGO / DORA MAAR / MARCIN MACIEJOWSKI / GOSHKA MACUGA / MADAME D'ORA / JONATHAN MEESE / ALBERT OEHLEN / GJON MILI / SANDRO MILLERTO JONIMUEWUM / ROBERT MILLERTO JONIMATURA / ROBERT MILLER / OTHER MILLAS / OTHER MILLAS MONK TERESE SCHULMEISTER / ERNST WILHELM NAY / CLAES OLDENBURG / ARPENCK / IRVING PENN / SIGMAR POLKE / RICHARD PRINCE / ARNULF RAINER / DIETER ROTH / EUGENIO RECUENCO / CHÉRI SAMBA / PETER SAUL / ANTONIO SAURA / THOMAS SCHEIBITZ / THOMAS SCHÜTTE / CINDY SHERMAN / JOHN VIEZALDE / JENNIFER STEZAKER ANDRÉ VILLERS / WOLFE VON LENKIEWICZ / ANDY WARHOL / JOEL PETER WITKIN / ALEXANDER WOLFF / ZHANG HONGTU / ZHOU TIEHAI / THOMAS ZIPP / HEIMO ZOBERNIG