System and Revision. The Art Collection at the TU Dresden. #3 Acquisitions and commissions from the 1970s and 1980s

28 October 2022 – 20 January 2023
Opening 27 October 2022, 6:00 pm
In the Galerie der Kustodie in the Görges building and architecture-bound art on the TU Dresden campus

Exhibition views

With works by  Peter Albert, Dieter Bock von Lennep, Agathe Böttcher, Jutta Damme, Bruno Dolinski, Wieland Förster, Kerstin Franke-Gneuß, Karl-Heinz Georgi, Hubertus Giebe, Peter Graf, Bernd Hahn, Angela Hampel, Helmut Heinze, Johannes Heisig, Detlef Herrmann, Walter Howard, Hildegard Jahn-Wiegel, Anton Paul Kammerer, Petra Kasten, Siegfried Klotz, Friedrich Kracht, Andreas Küchler, Wilhelm Landgraf, Helge Leiberg, Manfred Luther, Frank Maasdorf, Paul Michaelis, Herbert Naumann, Johannes Peschel, Dietrich Peter, Stefan Plenkers, Egmar Ponndorf, Egon Pukall, Rosemarie Rataiczyk und Werner Rataiczyk, Thea Richter, Hans Rothe, Jürgen Schieferdecker, Christine Schlegel, Jürgen Seidel, Rudolf Sitte, Wolfgang Smy, Charlotte Sommer-Landgraf, Franz Tippel, Gudrun Trendafilov, Max Uhlig, Wolff-Ulrich Weder, Claus Weidensdorfer, Christoph Wetzel, Arnd Wittig and others.

Epilogue: Niels-Christian Fritsche, Frank Mehnert, Carsten Nicolai and Jörg Tischer
In the Kabinett: Klaus Dennhardt, Hermann Glöckner, Werner Lieberknecht and Jürgen Schieferdecker

© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

In addition to the classic teaching and research collections, an extraordinary art collection belongs to the Office for Academic Heritage at the TU Dresden. This collection has been systematically expanded with the addition of over 4,000 pieces since 1951. In this large-scale exhibition of the Academic Heritage collection inventory from the 1970s and 80s, paintings, graphic art, photographs and art-on-architecture are being presented on campus. The group exhibition, “System and Revision,” is just as multi-faceted and fascinating as previous exhibitions on the university art collection in the 1950s and 60s. The focus is on the artists and their works in the context of the heterogeneous collection and acquisition policies of the period. Besides commissioned work by Dresden artists affiliated with the system then in place‚ works not associated with the officially supported art production were also acquired. These were financed, for example, with architecture-bound pieces like those produced by the „Association for art on architecture“ or operated in the 1980s between tolerance, forced revocation of citizenship and withdrawal from public life.
Some of these are abstract paintings and works on paper, others are piece by younger artists such as Helge Leiberg, Christine Schlegel, Petra Kasten and Angela Hampel. In addition, the well-known portraits of people associated with the university and that characterize the collection continue to play an important role.
In a group surrounding Niels-Christian Fritsche and Carsten Nicolai, four artists or architects are represented whose student projects in the late 1980s addressed topics like urban planning and environmental protection and confronted the collapse of society.  “System and Revision“ is dedicated not only to a consideration of this generation of artists, but also to abstract pieces such as the work of  Friedrich Kracht, Peter Albert and Manfred Luther, focusing particularly in the Kabinett on Hermann Glöckner. Among these is the portrait of the physicist and GDR politician Lieselott Herforth, the first ever woman to hold the position of university president in all of Germany, which was painted by Jutta Damme.
The title, “System and Revision“ doesn’t mean transformation – not yet – however, in the late 1980s, the end of the GDR and the early signs of the wall’s destruction, the revolution of 1989/90 was already in the air.