Städel Museum's 2015 Retrospective Revisits West Germany's 1980s Figurative Painting Movement

Between July 22 and October 18, 2015, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt hosted an exhibition titled 'The 80s: Figurative Painting in West Germany,' which displayed 97 pieces from 27 different artists. This exhibition focused on the Junge Wilde movement, a group of painters who emerged after World War II, positioning themselves against Minimalism and Conceptualism. Prominent cities included Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg, with recurring themes of self-portraits, the human form, and political commentary. Many artworks had not been exhibited since prior to the 1987 market crash. Featured artists were Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, and the Mülheimer Freiheit collective. Noteworthy pieces included Volker Tannert's 'Small Ceremony for the Modern' (1982) and Kippenberger's 'Two Proletarian Women Inventors on their Way to the Inventors' Congress' (1984). Curator Martin Engler emphasized the artists’ intentional disruptions of context. The exhibition catalogue was not available in English.