Raoul Hausmann was one of the most innovative avant-garde artists of the modernist era. Art and life, in his view, were inextricably connected. His desire to discard familiar forms and constantly enact “tomorrow” made him a trailblazer in multi-media art. As a Dadaist he was among those who invented collage, but he also devised synaesthetic apparatus, penned experimental texts, gave performances that explored the relationship between body, sound and space, and merged the visual with the haptic in his photography. Throughout his life, not only in his art but also in his quest for new ways to live and to think the world, he was eager to break free of convention and swim against the bourgeois tide.
The big retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie, featuring some 200 works from collections in Germany and abroad, will showcase this multi-facetted and pioneering creativity which so influenced subsequent generations of artists and place it in the context of current discourse.
Hausmann’s late œuvre, produced after he left Nazi Germany for France, will feature prominently thanks to generous input from the Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne ‒ Château de Rochechouart. This continues the acclaimed series of collaborative ventures between the Berlinische Galerie and other European museums.
With the kind support of the Capital Cultural Fund.