Capitalist Realism

In 1963, Gerhard Richter and Konrad Lueg announced their “Living with Pop” happening and, in a Düsseldorf furniture shop organised a “demonstration for Capitalist Realism” – a term used quite deliberately to distinguish it from its socialist counterpart. Picking up on this idea, West Berlin gallerist René Block collected other artists such as Sigmar Polke, KP Brehmer, Karl-Heinz Hödicke and Wolf Vostell under this label for a number of years. This exhibition catalogue presents 100 prints from Block’s collection, among them some of the most celebrated contemporary German artists such as Polke and Richter. The creative diversity and political commitment of these works, which are often critical comments on West German relationships and also humorous experiments with borrowings from American Pop Art and Fluxus, represent a significant contribution to West German art of the 1960s.