At the end of January 2019, Harald Metzkes, who lives in Altlandsberg near Berlin in Brandenburg, turned 90. To mark the occasion, the Stiftung Kunstforum paid tribute to him with this exhibition.
Born in Bautzen, the artist moved to East Berlin in the mid-1950s, where he refused to comply with the official guidelines of the GDR’s cultural policy. He was soon counted among the non-conformist “Berlin School”. He is considered one of the most important artists of the GDR and of contemporary art. Harald Metzkes created multi-layered and enigmatic symbols of social realities. In doing so, he developed a style influenced in particular by 19th-century French paintings.
The art collection of the Berliner Volksbank owns almost 70 works by Harald Metzkes. In the first exhibition in the new Kunstforum, all of Harald Metzkes’ paintings from the Berliner Volksbank art collection were shown for the first time. The collection unites a stock of representative works that has grown over three decades and highlights Metzke’s development.
24 minutes © Stiftung KUNSTFORUM der Berliner Volksbank gGmbH.
