Grey areas/worlds of color. Art and images of time 1945–1955
The exhibition Grauzonen/Farbwelten, hosted by the Akademie der Künste at Hanseatenweg in 1983, included around 700 exhibits from the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, design, photography, literature, journalism, music, and history. The working group wished to offer a counterpoint to the idealization and mystification of the postwar years and draw attention “to things that have been repressed and forgotten, to overlooked contexts,” as the foreword puts it; objects like petticoats and kidney-shaped tables, supposedly embodiments of the “Adenauer era,” often create a distorting mirror that “flirts with the fascination of things whose fustiness renders their risqué character harmless.” The 448-page catalogue, published in cooperation with Medusa Verlag, contains fifteen essays, a series of interviews, indexes on the exhibition’s various themes, an index of names, and almost 600 illustrations in color and black-and-white.

Ed.: nGbK

Work group: Christian Borngräber, Klaus Ebbeke, Tilman Fichter, Hartmut Frank, Thomas Friedrich, Peter Hielscher, Freya Mülhaupt, Ute Schmidt, Ute Schmidt, Bernhard Schulz, Barbara Straka

With contributions by: Hans B. Bruns, Uli Höhns, Yvonne Leonard, Elke Pahl-Weber, among others