Facing the Future: Art in Europe 1945–68 24 June – 25 September 2016 Save the Date Press Opening: 23Rd of June at 11 Am

Facing the Future: Art in Europe 1945–68 24 June – 25 September 2016 Save the date Press opening: 23rd of June at 11 am

Fernand Léger, Builders with Aloe, 1951. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. © SABAM Belgium 2016. For the first time, in cooperation with the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the ZKM in Karlsruhe, BOZAR presents a survey of the artistic trends that flourished in Eastern and Western Europe after the Second World War. Despite the political tensions and the background of the Cold War, artists on both sides of the Iron Curtain experimented with similar art forms such as media art, action painting, conceptual art, and sound art.

Facing the Future: Art in Europe 1945–68 sheds light on a vibrant period in the recent history of art via 200 works by 150 artists from 18 European countries, including the former Soviet Union.

This exceptionally wide-ranging overview includes key works by, among others, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Jean Fautrier, Jean Dubuffet, Max Beckmann, Hannah Höch, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Vladimir Tatlin, Ossip Zadkine, Tadeusz Kantor, Andrzej Wróblewski, Karel Appel, Armando, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein, Marcel Broodthaers, Victor Vasarely, Jean Tinguely, Christo, Nam June Paik, Gerhard Richter, Lucian Freud, Georg Baselitz, A.R. Penck, and Joseph Beuys.

In a series of exhibitions in 2016, BOZAR is exploring the significance and effects of the avant- garde. In Facing the Future, BOZAR looks at the resurgence of avant-garde movements in Europe after Nazism had branded modern art as "entartet" (degenerate) and the Second World War had claimed an unprecedented number of victims.

The exhibition examines the crucial impact of the Second World War on the development of art in Europe. Artists are often the first to sense major changes in society and to break with taboos. In the early post-war years, art mainly gave expression to mourning, memory, and coping with the trauma. Both on the "losing" and on the "winning" side, artists sought to come to terms with the unthinkable

events that had taken place by looking back. Many works of art of that time are pervaded by the war and are characterised by dark colours, ashen faces, and grim motifs.

Starting in the 1950s, scope emerged for a new perspective on the future. The development of new technologies such as nuclear power and space travel and the rise of the consumer society led to the dominance of an idealistic faith in the future. New artistic movements such as ZERO, nouveau réalisme, pop art, and kinetic art came into being. The exhibition ends, symbolically, in 1968: a key year, in which utopian thinking came to an end with widespread student revolts and the Invasion of the Warsaw Pact Armies after the Prague Spring.

Facing the Future brings together, for the first time, art from Eastern and Western Europe, thereby throwing new light on the history of art. For a long time, it was assumed that the only art in Eastern Europe was Max Beckmann, Removal of the Sphinxes, totalitarian state art and that there were no avant-garde 1945, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. © movements there, and that post-war Western Europe was SABAM Belgium 2016 mainly subject to dominant influences from the US. Facing the Future corrects that picture.

It is clear now that Europe was by no means as artistically divided as had been thought and that there was actually considerable interchange between artists. In Eastern Europe, too, avant-garde arts flourished, but underground. On both sides of the Wall, similar artistic trends developed, such as pop art, conceptual art, action art, sound art, kinetic art, and new-media arts (using photography, film, TV, video, and computers). In artworks of the time, one finds shared values, despite the Cold War and the prevailing context of hostility. This is something that is still relevant, certainly in the present context of increased tension between Europe and Russia.

The exhibition

The exhibition is presented chronologically and is made up of six Gerhard Richter, Uncle chapters: [1] Prologue and end of the war, [2] Mourning and memory, [3] Rudi, 1965. Lidice Memorial, The Cold War, [4] New idealisms, [5] New realisms, and [6] 1968: The Lidice. © Gerhard Richter end of utopias?. Facing the Future includes works on loan from museums throughout Europe and Russia, including Tate Modern (London), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Nationalgalerie (Berlin), the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow), and the Hermitage (St Petersburg), as well as less well-known and private collections in Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

Facing the Future includes key works such as Ossip Zadkine's Destroyed City, Max Beckmann's Transporting the Sphinxes, Gerhard Richter's Uncle Rudi, Henry Moore's Falling Warrior, Karel Appel's Pair, Fernand Léger's Builders, and The Black Flag by Marcel Broodthaers. A number of the works of art and artists, moreover, are being seen for the first time in Brussels – a revelation for the public.

International cooperation and European programme

Facing the Future is a travelling exhibition and, true to the spirit behind its conception, will be seen in both Europe and Russia. After BOZAR, it can be seen during the Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair) at the ZKM in Karlsruhe (21 October 2016 – 29 January 2017) and at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow (6 March – 28 May 2017).

BOZAR and the avant-garde

Theo van Doesburg: A New Expression of Life, Art and Technology (26.02 – 29.05.2016) and Daniel Buren: A Fresco (19.02 – 22.05.2016) kicked off a series of exhibitions that explore the significance and the after-effects of the avant-garde. Avant-garde artists not only bring about a revolution in form, but also take a stand in society. In the twentieth century, two fault lines can be observed: just before and during the First World War, on the one hand, and between 1945 and 1968, on the other. Pablo Picasso, Nude on a divan, 18 April 1944. Later in the season, two major group exhibitions will Courtesy Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. © Succession Picasso/SABAM further examine the theme of the avant-garde. In The Belgium 2016, photo: FABA/Marc Domage Power of the Avant-garde (29.09.2016 - 22.01.2017), leading artists of our time, including Luc Tuymans and Marlène Dumas, will enter into a dialogue with the "historic" avant-garde of just before and after the First World War: from pioneers such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch via Russian Futurists, German expressionists, and internationally oriented constructivists to the Bauhaus in Weimar.

The avant-garde was not restricted to Europe. In 1954, in Kyoto, for example, the Gutai movement emerged, which had close links with the ZERO movement. It is one of the key movements that will be explored in Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s and 1960s: A Feverish Time for Japanese Artists (14.10.2016 – 22.01.2017).

Tickets: € 16 - 14 (BOZAR FRIENDS) Curators: Dr. Eckhart Gillen, Prof. Dr. h.c. Mult, Peter Weibel With help of: Danila Bulatov (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) and Daria Mille (ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe) Coproduction: The exhibition is organised by BOZAR (Centre for Fine Arts), Brussels, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, State Museum Exhibition Centre ROSIZO and Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moskou With the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, the Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the kingdom of Belgium, the Flemish Government, and the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.