In its scope, Two and One: Printmaking in Germany 1945-1990 is without precedent. It presents the first comprehensive scholarly look at twentieth-century printmaking in Germany from the end of World War II to the present. Unlike other recent exhibitions in the United States that reviewed only the work of West German artists, this exhibition includes approximately 150 works from many well-known artists (Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter), as well as important lesser known artists (Gerhard Altenbourg) from both the former German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. Together the works explore questions of identity and of continuity in the German artistic tradition. Organized around six major categories, Survivors, Revivification, Ideological Divide, Challenging Establishments, Neo-Expressionism, and After the Wall: One and Two Germanys, and displayed chronologically, the audience discovers through the medium of print the many developments in the arts, aesthetics and politics of a Germany that went from being politically and physically divided in 1949 to being reunited with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

A series of experimental films will be screened in conjunction with Two and One: Printmaking in Germany 1945-1990 (starting in October 2003) to further emphasize the multimedia efforts of several of the exhibited artists who worked as printmakers, performance artists and also filmmakers.

Two and One: A Symposium
October 18, 2003

A symposium exploring the interdisciplinary issues surrounding the arts, philosophy, and postwar history of a divided and then reunified Germany, accompanies the exhibition.

Moderated by Patricia G. Berman
Department of Art History, Wellesley College

Session I: 9:30am – 12:30pm

Nicolas de Warren
Antiworld and Exile: Aesthetics in Postwar Germany
Department of Philosophy, Wellesley College

Christine Mehring
For Whom? Art and Politics in the German Sixties and Seventies
Department of Art History, Yale University

Reinhold Heller
Two and One: Observations on the Graphic Arts in Two Germanys, 1945-1990
Guest-Curator of the exhibition
Department of Art History and of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago

Discussion: 11:45am – 12:30pm

Session II: 2:00pm – 5:00pm

Otto Piene
Sky Art
Artist and Professor Emeritus
Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Cambridge

Peter Nisbet
Just What Is It That Makes German Art So Different, So Appealing?
Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum,
Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge

Claus Löser
Crossing Points: The Independent Art Scene in the Former GDR
Film Critic and Film Curator
Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin

Discussion: 4:30pm – 5:00pm

Reinhold Heller
Guest Curator