The exhibition is held in honor of the generous gift of Susan and Martin Sanders, New York, to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, that includes important works by some of the prominent Neo-Expressionist artists active in Berlin during the 1970s and 1980s: Karl Horst Hödicke, Rainer Fetting, Salomé, Helmut Middendorf and Peter Chevalier.

Their works represent interesting aspects of the “back to painting” trend that had swept over the centers of the western world, in Europe and the USA, as a backlash to the minimal and conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s. The Neo-Expressionist artists reacted to their complex reality in West Berlin in the shadow of the Cold War, through sensuous, tactile painting that assimilated the colorful intensity and formal elements of German Expressionism of early 20th century and of American Abstract Expressionism. The fresh and lively aesthetic approach of these paintings was characterized by large formats, bold color, narrative, upfront exposure of the self, provocativity, seductiveness and assimilation of images outside the realm of art.

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is Israel’s leading museum of modern and contemporary art, and home to one of the world’s largest collections of Israeli art. Each year, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art welcomes more than 500,000 visitors, offering them over twenty annual Israeli and international art exhibitions.

Image: Salome, Kirchner Letter,1979 Tel Aviv Museum of Art

www.tamuseum.com

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