PRESS INFORMATION GENERALDIREKTION Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin PRESS – COMMUNICATION – SPONSORING

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin Stauffenbergstraße 41 Invalidenstraße 50/51, D-10557 Berlin 10785 Berlin Opening hours: TUE, WED, FRI 10am – 6pm, THUR 10am – 8pm, SAT + SUN 11am – 6pm MECHTILD KRONENBERG STURTEVANT. DRAWING DOUBLE REVERSAL HEAD OF COMMUNICATION

30 May - 23 August, 2015 Phone: +49 30 266-42 34 02 Opening: 29 May, 7pm Fax: +49 30 266-42 34 09

[email protected] The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the MMK Museum für www.smb.museum/presse Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main and the Albertina in Vienna.

STURTEVANT. DRAWING DOUBLE REVERSAL is the first exhibition to SARAH KAES focus upon the graphic oeuvre of Elaine Sturtevant (1924–2014). It Press officer Nationalgalerie presents a selection of more than one hundred drawings from throughout the artist’s career from 1964 to the present and allows a concentrated Phone: +49 30 3978 34-17 Fax: +49 30 3978 34-13 overview of Sturtevant’s graphic works of five decades. [email protected] The earliest drawings in this exhibition mark the commencement of the www.smb.museum/hbf artist’s oeuvre fifty years ago. In its chronology, the selection of drawings mirrors the course taken by Sturtevant’s overall artistic development. Studies of Sturtevant’s graphic oeuvre suggest that her early drawings are the key to understanding her conceptual work. Particularly her drawings of 1965 and 1966 convey an impression of her radical artistic thought and the status of her work in art history as a kind of “mega Pop” or “Pop surplus”. A native of Lakewood Ohio, during the 1960s Elaine Sturtevant lived and worked in New York City. In that period she cultivated very close relationships with fellow artists such as , and . Her first solo exhibition, staged by the Bianchini Gallery in New York in 1965, amounted to a critical commentary on the art world of the time and its marketing strategies, and as such played a key role for the protagonists of American .

With her reproductive method, Sturtevant followed and expanded on ’s oeuvre by taking already existing artworks as her models. As the artist once said about her works: “The emotional and intellectual shock of encountering a known object whose contents are then denied, even if it doesn’t trigger immediate rejection, always causes erratic and bewildering trains of thought. They lead to a loss of balance which promotes thought.” Sturtevant placed duplicates at the side of her contemporaries’ artworks, exploring the relationship between original and originality in the process. In this way she questioned aura, authenticity, the pressure to be innovative, individuality, unicum and genuineness. Sturtevant adopted “the beauty of repetition” as her artistic strategy. In 2011 Sturtevant received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale

Exhibition catalogue The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue giving an comprehensive view on the artist’s drawing oeuvre. Published by the Ringier Verlag, it is available at the museum shop for 29 euros.

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STURTEVANT. DRAWING DOUBLE REVERSAL. Ed: Susanne GENERALDIREKTION Gaensheimer, Mario Kramer (MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt PRESS – COMMUNICATION – SPONSORING am Main); Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Antonia Hoerschelmann (Albertina Stauffenbergstraße 41 Wien); Udo Kittelmann (Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), 10785 Berlin JRP | Ringier Verlag, Zurich, 2014, (DT/ENG), p. 192, ISBN 978-3-03764- 396-9 MECHTILD KRONENBERG JRP | Ringier HEAD OF COMMUNICATION Limmatstraße 270 CH-8005 Zurich Phone: +49 30 266-42 34 02 Fax: +49 30 266-42 34 09 www.jpr-ringier.com [email protected] Events: www.smb.museum/presse

Accompagning the exhibition STURTEVANT. DRAWING DOUBLE REVERSAL there will be talks and guided tours. SARAH KAES Further information: www.smb.musem/hbf Press officer Nationalgalerie

Press images for download www.smb.museum/presse Phone: +49 30 3978 34-17 Fax: +49 30 3978 34-13

[email protected] www.smb.museum/hbf

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