HistoryThe documenta exhibitionsin cooperation with the documenta Archiv für die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Kassel
d1 1955
The first documenta, created by Kassel painter and academy professor Arnold Bode in 1955, was an unexpected world success. The exhibition, which was launched as the accompanying program to ...
Based on the success of the first show, the second documenta in 1959 was already made an institution: it was now organized by a limited liability company and the conceptual realization spread among a larger number of art historians. These experts now focused on the post-War period, programmatically subtitling the exhibition "Art after 1945". 1945 was conceived not only as a political caesura. On the basis of ...
"Art is what major artists make.“ This was the motto of documenta 3 in 1964. Werner Haftmann again tried to justify his hypothesis on the primacy of pre-War Modernism and for the last time the show centered on the older generation of artists with selected works, documenting ...
The run-up to documenta 4 in 1968 was riddled with debate and controversy, with the key question being the very future of the documenta. The politicization of society in the late 1960s also made itself felt in Kassel – red flags and groups of people chanting slogans meant that the opening speeches could not be held. Moreover, internally documenta 4 underwent a generational conflict and a debate on ...
documenta 5 in 1972 was regarded as the most important caesura in the history of the documenta thus far, as from now on the exhibition was placed under the aegis of an artistic director. As a response to the increasing complications arising from the ...
documenta 6 of 1977 faced the task of formulating an independent, new definition of the concept of the thematic exhibition following the extensive, encyclopaedic concept the preceding documenta adopted. The media concept of d6, devised by artistic director Manfred Schneckenburger, attempted to ...
Rudi Fuchs, the artistic director of documenta 7 in 1982, wanted to free art of the “various constraints and social parodies it is caught up in.” Nor should the exhibition be restricted by a theoretical concept. The works of art should be able to ...
The eighth documenta in 1987 was also the second to be organized by Manfred Schneckenburger as artistic director. It concentrated on examining art's social relevance in the field of conflict between independence and intervention, and sought to explore the points of contact between design, art and architecture. However, ...
Jan Hoet, artistic director of documenta 9 in 1992, described the exhibition as “a documenta of locations” and one based “solely on the artist and his work”. In not pursuing a theoretical concept with documenta 9, or offering a general thematic context, Hoet effectively broke with a documenta principle that ...
In 1997, Catherine David was the first women to be appointed artistic director of a documenta – the last before our transition to the new millennium. This led David to use as a central motif the idea of “looking back into the future”. She presented ...