Special Exhibition “Realism and Eastmodernism”, extended until 9 July 2021

The exhibition was extended until 9 July 2021.

The exhibition “Realism and Eastmodernism” presents acquisitions and commissions from the 1960s in the Office for Academic Heritage’s art collection and follows the survey “Upheaval and (Re)commencement,” dedicated to the previous decade. Unlike the 1950s, which was marked by a massive construction boom, only a few institutional buildings and dormitories were erected in the sixties.

Exhibition views

These, however, were heavily characterized by a certain “type.” The beginning of “eastmodern” art and design appeared in futuristic facades, such as the one on the Schönfeld lecture hall in the Barkhausen building by Kurt Wünsche and Harry Schulze, in the large-format concrete reliefs by Elfriede and Siegfried Schade on the student dorms at Fritz-Löffler- Str. 12, as well as in the abstract wall piece designed by Peter Albert on the present-day St. Petersburger Str., which was built over in the 1990s. Investigations on ceramic glaze and building materials as well as conceptual developments of the artists Karl-Heinz Adler and Friedrich Kracht, which they carried out at the Chair of construction design and in the workshops at the TU Dresden, will be presented in the exhibition as models and studies.

The broad and dynamic field of art production in these years ranges from realism to abstraction, conformism to utopia and is made tangible through the landscape and industrial representations, images and constructivist compositions on display. Portraits of rectors, professors and students provide insights into portraiture in this period.