The Shape Of Freedom: International Abstraction After 1945

Exhibition at Museum Barberini, Potsdam, 4 June - 25 September 2022

Following World War II, Western painting went in radically new directions. A young generation of artists turned their backs on the dominant styles of the interwar period: instead of figurative representation or geometric abstraction, painters in the orbit of Abstract Expressionism in the US and Art Informel in Western Europe pursued an impulsive approach to form, color, and material.

This exhibition catalogue examines the flowering of radical abstraction against the background of a vibrant transatlantic exchange, from the 1940s through to the end of the Cold War. Lavishly illustrated, it brings together works by more than 50 artists, amongst them Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, Helen Frankenthaler, K.O.Götz, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Georges Mathieu, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Judit Reigl, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne, Clyfford Still, and Jack Tworkov, giving new insights on the creative interplay between painters.