German Art and Architecture

Toward the end of World War II, West German artists (Willi Baumeister, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Emil Schumacher and Fritz Winter among others) tended to become involved in abstract art, while the artists in East Germany (Bernhard Heisig, Werner Tübke, Walter Libuda and Volker Stelzmann) were taught to produce "socialist and realist" artwork.

Other tendencies that appeared in West German art between the end of the war and the mid-seventies included pop art, fluxus, action art and conceptual art. Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz and Anselm Kiefer are some of the most representative artists of these decades. And we should not forget about Joseph Beuys, who with his work marked out various directions which were to be followed by the coming generations.

During the 1980's, art flourished largely due to the creation of a new younger market brought about by the economic boom. During the following decade, art preferences tended to favour the cross between art and technology, to such a point that artists such as Katharina Grosse, Jonathan Meese and Neo Rauch are rare within that decade's artistic panorama, given their inclination to use brushes and pallets.