Mythos und Massaker. Ernst Wilhelm Nay und André Masson

In the organizer's words:

The exhibition in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection is dedicated for the first time to the artistic relationship between the French surrealist André Masson and the Berlin artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay, whose art became the figurehead of abstract modernism in post-war West Germany.

André Masson's (1896-1987) large-format painting "Massacre", which is the starting point of the exhibition, was created in 1931. A year later, it was published in large format by Christian Zervos in the magazine "Cahiers d'art". On a formal level, this painting and a series of other paintings and drawings by Masson from the same period bear striking similarities to works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay (1902-1968) from the 1940s.

In terms of content, Ernst Wilhelm Nay and André Masson, who never met in person, took largely opposing positions: While Masson's works focus on the memory of the horrors of the First World War, the young soldier Nay creates a mythological counter-world to the catastrophe of the Second World War. Analytical Cubism, developed in 1909-1912 by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963), and "automatic writing" ("écriture automatique"), first propagated by the Surrealists around André Breton in the early 1920s, were the model for this new formal language. In the 1940s and 1950s, it was also used by artists such as Asger Jorn (1914-1973), Georg Meistermann (1911-1990) and Theodor Werner (1886-1969).

A total of around 70 works are on display.

Curator

The exhibition is curated by Kyllikki Zacharias, Head of the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection.

https://www.smb.museum/ausstellungen/detail/mythos-und-massaker/

Price information:

Myth and Massacre + Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection 12.00 EUR reduced 6.00 Annual ticket from 25.00 EUR