All publications

The first issue of Journal der Künste under the presidency of Manos Tsangaris and Anh-Linh Ngo focuses on artistic freedom. Texts by Lena Gorelik, Ralf Michaels, Carsten Wurm and others as well as a conversation with Kristóf Kelemen and Gergely Nagy from Hungary address the defence of artistic autonomy from various perspectives. Further contributions provide insights into the genesis of the current exhibitions and the work of the archive.

What do Putzi, a children’s toothpaste, the Leipzig Zoo and eating yoghurt have in common? They are advertised in the posters selected for the 2025 Calendar of GDR Posters. The Akademie der Künste houses an extensive collection of posters from the early German Democratic Republic, which provides the basis for the annual calendar.

Candida Höfer’s oeuvre, which has grown over five decades, ranks among the photographic avant-garde of the present day. The large-format images show public and semi-public spaces such as libraries, storage rooms, museums and opera houses – places of encounter, communication, memory and knowledge. They are not architectural photographs, but rather portraits of spaces. Höfer uses them to explore architectural concepts and how they form the human experience. The exhibition catalogue contains numerous illustrations and an essay by Matthias Sauerbruch.

Works by the 2023 recipient of the Käthe Kollwitz Prize, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, focus on conflicts with which societies all over the world are currently grappling. She tackles questions relating to gender and sexuality, intercultural reflections and spiritual practices, confronting them with archetypes of our collective consciousness and social taboos. Human existence is at the centre of her poetic visual world – explicitly, women and the female body. The exhibition catalogue contains numerous illustrations and an essay by Siegfried Zielinski.

The exhibition catalogue encompasses all the work studies and paintings in the show – including completely unknown works on paper – investigating for the first time the potential of a single motif running through Bridget Riley’s creative oeuvre: the circle as form. In a brief history, the texts explore this “strictest of all forms” within the scope of its dynamic ability to unfold, the significance of studies, and scalability.

The AI Anarchies Book sheds light on the debate surrounding AI and ethics from an artistic and scholarly perspective, exploring new approaches to the topic. As documentation, reflection and toolbox, the publication conveys knowledge and background information on the AI Anarchies Autumn Academy (2023) and the artistic projects created within the programme in essays, interviews, image galleries and recipes.

The Serpentara’s 150th anniversary takes a fresh look at this inspirational location. In 1873, artists saved the oak grove in Olevano Romano, Italy, from being cut down. Today, Villa Serpentara is a residence for visiting fellows from the Akademie der Künste. In 15 contributions, Serpentara artists, eyewitnesses and art historians explore the myth, visual motif and stories surrounding the famous oak grove, offering new approaches to its history.

How can time and transience be visualised? How can changes in a society or an urban space be documented? Since the mid-1960s, artist Michael Ruetz has been observing the transformation of natural and urban environments at places in Berlin, Germany and Europe in a photographic study. His works, called Timescapes, comprise more than 600 locations and thousands of photographs. The central concept of Timescapes is that the position and visual axis of the camera always remain the same, while only the time intervals of the photo series vary.

How can time and impermanence be rendered visible, and how can the upheavals and changes taking place in a society or an urban space be documented? Few other artists have concerned themselves with these questions to the extent that Michael Ruetz has. In the mid-1960s, he embarked on a large-scale photographic study to observe the transformation of natural and urban environments in Germany and Europe. Ruetz has recorded the metamorphoses in photographic series made up of images inventorying the changes and snapshots taken over decades. He calls them Timescapes.

The Journal der Künste, issue 22, bids farewell to Jeanine Meerapfel and Kathrin Röggla, the Akademie’s former president and vice-president. It explores the possibility of utopias with Matěj Spurný, Eva von Redecker and Iris ter Schiphorst and the political shift to the right in Germany with Thomas Krüger, Christina Clemm and Holger Bergmann. The 2023 Kollwitz Prize recipient, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, shows works from her oeuvre; and a Carte blanche designed by Wolfgang Tillmans is featured. The archive includes the stories behind a photomontage by István Szabó and newly acquired drawings by George Grosz, as well as insights into Jürgen Flimm’s director’s workshop.

Slatan Dudow (1903–1963) is considered one of the pioneering left-wing representatives of Weimar Cinema and filmmaking in the GDR. Some of his works have entered the canon of German and international film history. Others shaped cinema’s orientation at the time. This comprehensive anthology compiles new research findings, reminiscences, and accounts from more than 30 authors. The extensive Slatan Dudow Archive at the Akademie der Künste was assessed for the first time for this publication.

This extensive catalogue documents the works of photo artist Gundula Schulze Eldowy, which were produced in New York between 1990 and 1993 and shown at the Akademie in early 2024. It focuses on her friendship with the legendary photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank. The publication includes documents from her East Berlin and New York periods, texts by Helke Misselwitz, Hans-Michael Koetzle and Sara Blaylock, and a conversation between the photographer and Boris Friedewald.

Composer Gerd Kühr  (b. 1952 in Carinthia, Austria) studied under Hans Werner Henze, among others. He experienced his breakthrough in 1988 with the opera Stallerhof, based on the play by Franz Xaver Kroetz. To this day, he has devoted himself primarily to music theatre. In addition to an extensive interview with Gerd Kühr and an inventory of the Gerd Kühr Archive at the Akademie der Künste, the publication contains important texts by the composer.

Collages made from photo materials taken from print media played a significant role in George Grosz’s works, especially during his early period in Berlin and his final years in the United States. Both female and male stereotypes and their counterparts recur, as do props from everyday life and the consumer world, aptly commenting on the society of their times. The catalogue includes all the works in the exhibition. The texts present the most recent findings on collage in Grosz’s oeuvre, drawing associations to comparable works by Erwin Blumenfeld, Herbert Fiedler and Hannah Höch.

Even in her youth, Ursula Mamlok (1923–2016) had one single career goal: to become a composer – despite all the adversity of 1930s Berlin, which she left with her parents at the last minute in 1939. In New York, the struggle for her compositional identity began. After a successful career in the USA, the grande dame of contemporary music ventured a new beginning in Berlin in 2006 after her husband Dwight Mamlok passed away.