Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

The Romanian artist, Dan Perjovschi, takes 69 seconds to draw his picture on the wall in our exhibition space. In 69 seconds the word ‘capitalism’ is split in two and illustrated. ‘Capital’ gets a stick figure and the ‘ism’ a whole crowd of them. Once or twice the artist steps back a bit and looks at the drawing. Then he enlarges the ‘ism’ group.  

At the end of the video Vladimir Mitrev looks up, directly into the camera, sweating—beneath one sees the German national flag, whose colours he has just applied in four hours, or some ten kilometres, of walking. His video installation is titled Schwarz Rot Gelb (2009–2011) [Black Red Yellow]

The path to Germany is not an easy one. 

“A man found an aquarium on a road between towns—an aquarium with live fish in it. Someone had caught the fish in the lake and put them there on the road, hoping someone driving along the road would stop and buy the fresh fish. That is called a parallel economy—in contrast to the organised economy planned by the government and the state. This parallel economy developed as a way of survival.”

“The Desire for Freedom. Art in Europe since 1945“ is the 30th Council of Europe art exhibition. The Council has 47 member states and wants to achieve “a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress.” (Article 1, Statute of the Council of Europe). How does the Council want to achieve that? What else does it do? And what were the stories behind the other 29 Council of Europe art exhibitions? This is what we are going to look at in this category. And not to forget the European Commission which finances the exhibition.

(Who prefers reading Wikipedia or directly about the art exhibitions on the CoE site, please click here, here and here.)

That’s what it’s all about: the art works, the artists, the different rooms of the exhibition – art is what brought us together here, art is the filter through which we look at the big topics: human rights and their violations, democracy, freedom, and equality in Europe since 1945. Art comes first in the exhibition and on this blog. We show you the works and we tell the story behind them and their makers.

At the same time you will get a glimpse of the twelve rooms in “The desire for freedom. Art in Europe since 1945”, which not only each have a topic of their own but can also not be separated from the works shown inside them. That’s what the concept says (and we will also tell you about that). And how much exactly is an art transport from Paris?