Dividing Berlin painters by their position on either side of the Wall might seem reductive, but few venues are better suited to such an exploration than the former home of Max Liebermann, located directly next to Brandenburg Gate. Germany’s great nationalist symbol recurs like a corporate logo throughout the exhibition, sometimes golden and ethereal, sometimes monotonous and bleak, like Wolfgang Mattheuer’s dystopian painting, in which the gate’s grey columns rise like prison bars.
Downstairs paintings from East and West face off against each other, the vibrant colours on the West drowning out the paucity of the East. That’s not surprising – anyone discovered to have made unofficial representations of the Wall in the time of the DDR risked imprisonment. Concealment was necessary, as in Hans Ticha’s clenched fist beneath a faceless guard – both a symbol of repression and resistance.
Karl Horst Hodicke’s paintings are a highlight: tourists crane their necks like dogs over the Wall, and in ‘An der Mauer’ (1988), three arms rise from the earth, evoking either pleas for freedom or the grasping of the dead. It reminds you that the Wall – the ultimate manifestation of the East/West ideological divide – wasn’t just a barrier but a cage, too. While the exhibition seeks to highlight physical and political influences, the individualism of the artists come to the fore, showcasing how an object composed of concrete and metal shaped artistic visions as profoundly as it shaped the realities of division.
- Max Liebermann Haus, Pariser Platz 7, Mitte, now – March 2, details.
