The profound caesura of the Second World War also resulted in a radical upheaval in art. The martial catastrophe was followed by decades, during which the world was divided into East and West. Concomitantly, reconstruction began, and from the 1950s and 1960s onwards a spirit of optimism characterised society and art. New energies were released, and the traditional ideas of what constituted a work of art were once again questioned after the shock of modernism. The Kunst Museum Winterthur contains a variety of works from the immediate post-war period, but especially of art from the 1960s onwards. One focal point of the collection is Arte Povera, an artistic movement that emerged in Italy in the 1960s with now famous artists such as Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario and Marisa Merz and Giuseppe Penone. Using ‘poor’ materials, they began to contemplate the upheavals of the time, the social reorientation and political crises in Italy. On the occasion of the exhibition Italia, which is taking place concurrently, we are presenting a section of the extensive Arte Povera collection for the first time on the upper floor of the building ‘Reinhart am Stadtgarten’.

We juxtapose this with selected positions by artists from the North, especially from Germany. These organised themselves less in groups, but instead gathered around art centres such as Düsseldorf with its famous academy, which became a real epicentre thanks to artists such as Gerhard Richter, Isa Genzken, Pia Fries and Thomas Schütte.

Curator: Andrea Lutz