”DOCUMENTA 1, 1955″ 29.3 – 31.5

The story of the

DOCUMENTA 1, 1955

The starting point for the exhibition ‘DOCUMENTA I, 1955’ is an 11-metre-long pencil drawing by Florette Dijkstra, made in 1994, in which works of art from Documenta 1 are shown in their spatial museum environment, the Fredericianum museum in Kassel. The official Documenta 1 catalogue from 1955 only includes images of the works. Florette Dijkstra has reconstructed the presentation based on photographs taken of the exhibition after the opening.
In the exhibition “DOCUMENTA 1, 1955”, the retrospective of 1955 is expanded with works from the collection.

With work by:
Gijs van Lith, Florette Dijkstra, Xavier Noiret-Thomé, Mari Reijnders, Jeongwon Yoon, Li Binyuan, Henk Visch.

15 July – 18 September 1955, Kassel
Introduction by Werner Haftmann

From the Catalogue Documenta I, Kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts,

The idea of organising an international exhibition of 20th-century art in Germany today is so obvious that it seems to require no further justification. It has been almost a generation since a similar attempt was made in this country with the exhibition in Dresden in 1927. Germany has remained largely excluded from the exhibition scene in European countries, which has expanded enormously over the last ten years. But it was Germany that joined the circle of international avant-garde exhibitions very early on, with the unforgettable “Sonderausstellung” in Cologne in 1912 and the “Herbstsalon” organised by Herwarth Walden in Berlin in 1913. Whenever the problem of “the contemporary” became very pressing and pointed to the supranational, it was in the interest of the German spirit to justify itself on a broad front. (…)
When considering the meaning and purpose of a major art exhibition organised ten years after the end of German totalitarianism and in Germany itself, if it was to have any value for the general public, the decades-long development process of modern art could not be ignored under any circumstances; the widespread, ahistorical idea that a handful of individuals – desperate or genius, depending on one’s point of view

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