Please note the changed opening hours from 16 April 2024. More

K. O. Götz

13.12.2013 to 02.03.2014
Neue Nationalgalerie

Karl Otto Götz will be celebrating his 100th birthday in February 2014. To mark this great centenary, the Nationalgalerie is holding a comprehensive retrospective of his art. Around 60 major works by the artist will shed light on Götz's complex and rich oeuvre that has spanned more than eight decades.

Swirling, exploding forms and abstract, almost ideographic or totemic structures - Götz's work is characterized by the search for both an immediate and free form and, in the artist's own words, 'poetic expression in the non-representational.' The exhibition aims to especially highlight the serial processes behind his works, chance effects, as well as recurring visual concepts and rhythms that lend his paintings an equal measure of dynamism and order. The exhibition also reveals Götz's influence on future generations of artists, particularly his two most famous pupils, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter.

The scope of the display extends from his early, Surrealism-inspired 'air pump watercolours', his photograms and the formal variations of his Fakturenfibel, on to the famous squeegee works of the 1950s and 1960s, and ending with dazzling examples of his late work. The survey not only illustrates the enormous diversity of pictorial abstraction in K.O. Götz, but also its wider impact. On show in the austere purism of the Neue Nationalgalerie's upper hall, Götz's large, powerful canvases have a special visual impact that also underlines the immense importance of his work for the international development of art post 1945.

The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie.

Exhibition Website



Presented by the Nationalgalerie - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, in collaboration with MKM - Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, Duisburg, and the Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden.

Exhibition view of the retrospective at the Neue Nationalgalerie 2013/2014
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie / David von Becker

Potsdamer Straße 50
10785 Berlin

wheelchair accessible

U-Bahn: Potsdamer Platz
S-Bahn: Potsdamer Platz
Bus: Potsdamer Brücke, Potsdamer Platz Bhf / Voßstraße, Kulturforum, Philharmonie

Sun 10:00 - 18:00
Mon closed
Tue 10:00 - 18:00
Wed 10:00 - 18:00
Thu 10:00 - 20:00
Fri 10:00 - 18:00
Sat 10:00 - 18:00

Opening times on public holidays Opening Hours
Berlin Art-Week extended opening hours special exhibition Isa Genzken 75/75 upper hall Neue Nationalgalerie:

Tue, Wed, Thu, Sat + Sun until 10pm.
Fri regular opening hours until 6 pm

Annual ticket Classic Plus all exhibitions
100,00 EUR Concessions 50,00
Classic Plus: all exhibitions


Annual membership Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

from just 25,00 EUR

Annual Passes for the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Tel 030 - 266 42 42 42 (Mon - Fri, 9 am - 4 pm)
Questions | Bookings | Feedback