Those Early Years: British and German Art After 1945 - Tapa dura

Postwar Great Britain and Germany were both marked by literal hunger as well as hunger for artistic freedom of expression. As the artistic spirit reemerged in the 1950s, what did it look like in these two cultures? In this well-researched and attractive publication, Carina Plath and Dorthe Wilke, curators of the exhibition at the Sprengel Museum, Hanover, look at this time for signs of artistic autonomy rising from the ashes of a brutal period. Divided between sculptural work and painting, the show explores work that set the stage for the art world of today. Substantial essays by John-Paul Stonard, Gerhard Marks Haus, Arie Hartog and Carina Plath are intertwined with well-captioned reproductions of the featured works making this publication more of an historical document than exhibition catalog. Twenty-eight artists are featured including Francis Bacon, Willi Baumeister, Lynn Chadwick, Hans Hartung, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Bernard Schultze, Hans Uhlmann and more.