Works of art in the Reichstag building
The works of art in the Reichstag building are the graphics, paintings and objects by 29 artists that the German Bundestag acquired in 1999 and that are shown inside and outside the Reichstag and in the outbuildings.
General
When developing the art concept for today's Reichstag building, Götz Adriani and Karin Stempel advised the art advisory board of the German Bundestag on the purchase and concept of the permanent exhibition in the building. Together with a number of purchases and loans, this resulted in an important collection of contemporary art in the Reichstag. The purchase had a total value of eight million euros, which corresponded to the legally stipulated quota for art projects in public buildings (see art in buildings ). The purchase prices of the individual works of art were not published.
Gerhard Altenbourg
Gerhard Altenbourg's real name is Gerhard Ströch. He saw himself in the tradition of the analytical drawing art of Paul Klee. His work is called Great Landscape and is from 1953. The work of art is executed in Chinese ink as a watercolor on paper.
Georg Baselitz
Large canvases by Georg Baselitz have been installed in the southern entrance hall , as well as paintings with motifs based on Caspar David Friedrich . As was customary with him since the late 1960s, Baselitz turned these motifs upside down in order to reinforce the importance of the formal elements.
Joseph Beuys
In 1976 Joseph Beuys ran for the German Bundestag. Table with aggregate, 1958/85 is the name of his installation made of bronze and copper. It is a 1/4 copy and is on loan. The work of art is located in front of the plenary hall of the Bundestag.
Christian Boltanski
The archive of German parliamentarians is the name of the work of art by Christian Boltanski in the basement of the east entrance. Metal boxes are labeled with the names of all MPs from 1919 to 1999. They symbolize Germany's democratic tradition. The names of the MPs who were murdered by the Nazis are highlighted with a black ribbon.
Grisha Bruskin
The Russian artist Grisha Bruskin has created a monumental triptych in oil on canvas with the title Life above everything in the club room . It alludes to the first verse of the Deutschlandlied . 115 icon-like individual images, each depicting a person, are lined up in a row. Are shown e.g. B. The collective farmer , the soldier or the astronaut .
Christ
A design for Christo's Wrapped Reichstag project from 1986 is on display on the fourth floor in the roof garden restaurant
Carlfriedrich Claus
Living in the GDR in inner emigration, he installed an aurora room in front of the parliamentary lobby at the height of the visitor level. The work of Carlfriedrich Claus is shaped by Kabbalah and Marxist philosophy . He has handwritten theses and antitheses on free-hanging language boards executed as photo film on acrylic . The Aurora room is supposed to herald the dawn of utopia. Claus was a staunch communist.
Lutz Dammbeck
Lutz Dammbeck's multi-part work from ((collage)) n and overdrawings can be seen on the third floor on the parliamentary groups and press level .
Hanne Darboven
Darboven calls her work 12 Months, Europa Arbeit , 1998. It is a collage on parchment and is located in the lobby and press room of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group on the third floor. On 384 sheets she wants to commemorate 1997, the “European year against xenophobia and racism”
Otto Freundlich
Freundlich calls his work Sculpture Architecturale . The bronze sculpture from 1934/1935, copy 3/6, is on loan from the artist.
Rupprecht Geiger
Rupprecht Geiger's task was to place a work of art in a protocol room, which is equipped with panels in a dominant blue. Geiger's work is entitled Rot 2000, 875/99 . It is from 1999 and in acrylic on canvas.
Hermann Glöckner
Hermann Glöckner is represented with a showcase in front of the plenary hall . This is a work of Concrete Art .
Gotthard Graubner
Gotthard Graubner's color space body with the title … the rose-colored Eos awakens… The work is from 1998/1999 and is executed on canvas using mixed media in the protocol and meeting room on the second floor .
Hans Haacke
The installation The Population by Hans Haacke is located in the northern courtyard. 100 different plants and 20 animal species now live there. Visitors or members of parliament gradually fill the installation with soil from their home constituencies. The installation was controversial at the beginning.
Bernhard Heisig
Bernhard Heisig, a representative of the Leipzig School , has placed his oil painting in the cafeteria . It is titled Time and Life and dates from 1998/1999. His image is like a sequence of film clips with scenes from German history. On the left edge of the picture the black, red and gold colors of the revolution of 1848 open the scene.
Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer is represented with an installation for the Reichstag building from 1999. There are four steel steles with an electronically controlled script sequence. The steles are located at the north entrance of the Reichstag. 447 speeches are repeated continuously on the stelae for 20 days. Four speeches take place on the four sides of the pillars.
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is represented with a monumental painting in the reception room of the Reichstag building. It is about the conditionality of the human being. The title of the picture Nur mit Wind mit Zeit und mit Klang comes from the poem Exil by Ingeborg Bachmann . A towering ziggurat or a pyramid that crumbles again towards the end is reminiscent of similar towers from Mesopotamia. The line of poetry is written into the layer of paint at the top of the painting.
Jens Liebchen
Jens Liebchen made 29 artist portraits of the artists in front of their works in the Reichstag building. The portraits are shown in temporary exhibitions in the restaurant.
Markus Lüpertz
Markus Lüpertz's work 1840 from 1999 is represented at the front wall of the members' restaurant . The oil painting alludes to William Turner's trip to the Rhine in 1840. The year 1840 was a decisive year for Germany: In the so-called Rhine Crisis , a diplomatic crisis between the Kingdom of France and the German Confederation , the responsibility for defending Germany on the Rhine lay with Prussia .
Wolfgang Mattheuer
Wolfgang Mattheuer is represented in the Reichstag with two works of art Panik II (I.) and The One and the Other, Reflections on Autumn 1980 , both in oil on wood. He was one of the leading representatives of the Leipzig School in the GDR . New objectivity and surreal motifs describe his style.
Georg Karl Pfahler
In the meeting room of the Council of Elders , a body of the Bundestag, is the color-space object , an acrylic panel painting by Georg Karl Pfahler from 1998/1999 . Pfahler also had to assert himself against the blue wooden panels that dominated the room.
Sigmar Polke
Sigmar Polke had five light boxes fitted with playful collages from politics and history. Adenauer admonishes the photo reporter on a picture, test of strength, Mutton jump, Eulenspiegeleien and Germania are the subjects of the individual pictures.
Gerhard Richter
Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter saw themselves faced with the task of placing their work on 30 m high walls in the western entrance hall. With back-painted glass panels with a total height of 21 m in the colors black, red and yellow, Richter developed an ambiguous variation on the German state colors.
Ulrich Rückriem
Ulrich Rückriem created two floor sculptures in the southern courtyard . He contrasts the processed stones of the courtyard with his unprocessed granite slabs.
Emil Schumacher
It was one of Emil Schumacher's last works before his death in 1999. The expressionist artist titled it with Stations and Times, I – IV . It is executed in oil and acrylic on aluminum and is located on the second floor of the Reichstag building in the conference room.
Katharina Sieverding
The Beuys student Katharina Sieverding equipped the five-part photo painting with a background motif of a glowing sun corona. It refers to the purified democracy of the Germans or the unified Germany, which emerged again in 1990.
Walter Stöhrer
Walter Stöhrer is a student of HAP Grieshaber . His picture without title comes from the year 1995. It is a drypoint -Mischtechnik on paper. His works are a commitment to figurative art
Strawalde
Jürgen Böttcher is called Strahwalde after a place of his childhood and youth in Upper Lusatia . His teacher is AR Penck . The three collages in the Federal Chancellor's rooms in the Reichstag building are called Wendekreis , Meden and October 29, 1991 .
Günther Uecker
Uecker created a sacred space within the Reichstag. The so-called prayer room is located on the southeastern first floor of the Reichstag building between the staircase, elevators and toilet. In the anteroom there are ritual objects of different religions in an illuminated showcase . A side wall facing east shows supporters of the three monotheistic world religions Judaism , Christianity and Islam the way towards Jerusalem and Mecca . Toward the front of the room there is a sandblasted altar of granite . Specially designed benches and chairs complete the space.
literature
- The German Bundestag in the Reichstag building - German Bundestag, Public Relations Department, 328 pages (as of 2007).
- Carl-Christian Kaiser: The Reichstag building . In: German Bundestag, Public Relations Department (Ed.): Insights. A tour of the parliamentary district . German Bundestag, Berlin 2005, pp. 4–45 ( PDF ( Memento of July 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), 20.5 MB).
Web links
- Website of the German Bundestag : Artists and their works of art in the Reichstag building
Individual evidence
- ^ The German Bundestag in the Reichstag building - German Bundestag, Public Relations Department, as of 2007, p. 281