19. 5.-27. 8. 2017 Exhibition Hanne Darboven: Correspondences, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Venue: Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Staatliche Museum zu Berlin

Vernissage: 18. 5. 2017, 7pm

Hanne Darboven (1941–2009) is one of the the most significant German Conceptual artists. To mark Susanne and Michael Liebelt’s donation of works from all phases of the artist’s career to the Nationalgalerie, the exhibition will show drawings, numeric constructions and serial images that arose in the context of Minimal and Conceptual Art. These works are displayed alongside mailings from and to Hanne Darboven between 1967 and 1975, reflecting the emergence and cultivation of a dense network of artists, curators and friends. Prior to her death, Darboven selected about 1,150 letters, postcards, sketches, maps and photographs from this period for public view under the title Correspondence. Exhibited here for the first time, this collection, owned by the Hanne Darboven Foundation, provides hitherto unknown insights into the artist’s work process and into the art system around 1970.

This brings to the fore a figure long overshadowed by the artist, collector, and composer: Hanne Darboven the correspondent, with her irrepressible love of writing. The exhibition presents a selection of letters received by Hanne Darboven or penned by her to long-standing friends. These postal exchanges are the cue to inquire about artistic correspondences with her numerous writing partners. To this end, Darboven’s works are interspersed with works by Carl Andre, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Sol LeWitt and Lawrence Weiner, with whom the artist was in close contact. The works and the correspondence are presented in eight thematically arranged rooms across the entire first floor of the main building.

This exhibition is curated by Gabriele Knapstein, Petra Lange-Berndt and Dietmar Rübel and would not have been possible without the generous support of the Freunde der Nationalgalerie.