The MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam is showing the exhibition IM DIALOG – Hasso Plattner’s Collection: Art from the GDR from the 1st February 2025. The second presentation of the collection focuses on dialogue as an approach to the art of the former GDR.
Image above: Ralf Kerbach, Dresdner Freunde, 1983/84. Sammlung Hasso Plattner © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
IM DIALOG shows around 50 works by artists from the collection: Gudrun Brüne, Hartwig Ebersbach, Ulrich Hachulla, Rolf Händler, Bernhard Heisig, Johannes Heisig, Peter Herrmann, Ralf Kerbach, Walter Libuda, Peter Makolies, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Harald Metzkes, Stefan Plenkers, Gerhard Richter, Arno Rink, Cornelia Schleime, Willi Sitte, Gabriele Stötzer, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Werner Tübke and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, mainly from the period between 1966 and 1992.
The different perspectives of the artists and the contexts in which the works were created are illuminated in two exhibition chapters. The painting Portrait Henry Schumann (1968) by Arno Rink, which shows the art historian and critic Schumann in Rink’s studio, as well as his book Ateliergespräche, provide the impetus for the exhibition. The publication, published in 1976 by the Leipzig publishing house VEB E.B. Seemann, features 20 artists in dialogue with Schumann.
Established personalities such as Bernhard Heisig and Werner Tübke met positions with unconventional artistic training and career paths, such as Peter Hermann. This unusual mix and the focus on the individual voices of artists signalled a relaxation in cultural policy at the time, although this was marred in the same year (1976) by a series of cultural-political and social events such as the expatriation of the poet and songwriter Wolf Biermann.
In the first exhibition room, the artworks and artist talks are placed in their historical context. On the upper floor of the MINSK, individual works enter into dialogue with each other. These constellations point to broader questions about art history and cultural policy in the GDR after 1976. The selection is complemented by other works from the collection that visualise the dynamic between expression and withdrawal, between speaking out and silence.
IM DIALOG is also the occasion for a new series of studio talks that curator Daniel Milnes will be holding with artists from the collection and which will be published as a podcast series to accompany the exhibition. In this context, works from the collection will be examined from the artists’ perspective and the question of how art created in the GDR is seen and shown today will be explored.
The patron Hasso Plattner collects paintings with a focus on art from the former GDR, among other things, and exhibited his collection for the first time in 2012 at the House of Brandenburg-Prussian History in Potsdam. After individual paintings were shown in the group exhibition Behind the Mask 2017/18 at the Museum Barberini, DAS MINSK is now presenting parts of this collection for the second time in a building of Eastern Modernism, which was completed in 1977 as the former terrace restaurant ‘Minsk’.
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 1st. February – Sunday, 10. August 2025
WHERE?
DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam
Max-Planck-Straße 17
14473 Potsdam
COST?
Admission: 10 EUR
Reduced: 8 EUR
