In the exhibition hard & direct, the Kunsthalle Mannheim dedicates itself to the drawings and prints of New Objectivity. Drawing and painting are linked by works of sobriety and directness of depiction, cool gaze, social issues, and great hardness. The exhibition will demonstrate this as well as a close connection of content and technique in New Objective prints and drawings, an intense engagement of its artists with sociopolitical discourses, and the use of reproduction technologies to create distance and structure. It will also show that New Objective trends lived on in the art of Nazi era and even had lines that extended into the nonobjective art of the postwar period. This exhibition focuses on works from the museum’s own collection, supplemented by loans of high quality from German museums and a private collection.
Curator: Dr. Gunnar Saecker
The exhibition rings in the jubilee of New Objectivity at the Kunsthalle, which a number of institutions in Mannheim are using as an occasion to offer events under the motto “The 1920s in Mannheim” from September 1, 2024, to March 9, 2025. The spectrum ranges from exhibitions, concerts, and readings by way of theater, opera, film, tours, lectures, and symposia to parties.
