Tickets

Pause. Valeska Gert: Moving Fragments

17.09.2010 to 10.04.2011

Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

Valeska Gert's transdisciplinary art is to be paid tribute to for the first time ever in the National Gallery's Hamburger Bahnhof. The Berlin artist, performer and dancer, Valeska Gert (1892-1978) is one of this city's great figures, albeit one who remains vastly underestimated to this day. Her art probes the structures and effects of perception and is communicated here through works taken from the National Gallery's various collections.

The artist's works are placed alongside others that also tackle the phenomenon of perception, such as those by Marcel Duchamp and Valie Export. Even as far back as the 1920s, Valeska Gert's conceptual works anticipated happenings, current trends in performance art, popular, small-stage entertaining arts, free improvisation and many other developments in contemporary art and modern music. There were, however, no pigeon-holes for the innovations and concepts that she devised at the time. Gert's precise analysis in dance, acting, music and art still opens up unknown territory to us today, with her ideas transcending the present day.

To mark the exhibition in the Hamburger Bahnhof, a special publication is currently available, entitled: 'Valeska Gert - Ästhetik der Präsenzen' by Wolfgang Müller (Martin Schmitz Verlag: Berlin 2010).