STURTEVANT. DRAWING DOUBLE REVERSAL is the first exhibition to focus upon the graphic oeuvre of Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014). Some 100 works on paper dating from the 1960s onwards provide a comprehensive insight into Sturtevant’s radical artistic thinking. Her drawings show her far-reaching exploration of different possibilities of artistic expression and her constant interrogation of the mechanisms of the production and reception of art.

Sturtevant is today known above all for her appropriations of images and objects by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Marcel Duchamp. Her graphic oeuvre, in particular, reveals how the artist goes far beyond mere copying; rather, she subjects the works of her colleagues to re-interpretation. Insofar as she not only presents everyday objects as art, but repeats the artworks themselves in her drawings, she creates duplicated originals - "anti-readymades” that bear witness to her profoundly conceptual approach.

Sturtevant employs signs and symbols such as the hot dog, the American flag and Duchamp’s urinal in order to create an artistic representation of the specific reality of her contemporaries. The key artistic principle underpinning her entire oeuvre - namely the aesthetic of repetition - emerges particularly clearly in her graphic works and thereby points to the fundamental significance of her work for Pop Art and Conceptual Art. Elaine Sturtevant today ranks among the most influential artists of the second half of the twentieth century.

The exhibition STURTEVANT. DRAWING DOUBLE REVERSAL is organized in conjunction with the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main and the Albertina in Vienna.

Curators: Mario Kramer (MMK), Udo Kittelmann (Nationalgalerie)