Meret Oppenheim. Retrospective. Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

To mark the centenary of Meret Oppenheim’s birth in Berlin on October 6, 2013, the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin is dedicating a first major retrospective to the artist. Oppenheim became famous with her work “Le Déjeuner en fourrure” (1936), a teacup, saucer and spoon that the artist covered with fur. The Fur Cup is one of the masterpieces of Surrealist art and is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Meret Oppenheim created works that combined different materials in a playful and humorous way.

The exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin shows the whole spectrum of Meret Oppenheim’s oeuvre, which in its independence and diversity is still seen a pioneering force even today. Many of the works are normally hidden in private collection, so this retrospective is a unique chance to rediscover the work of this extraordinary artist. The exhibition presents around 200 exhibits in eight rooms. The oeuvre of Meret Oppenheim divides not only in different times, places, moods, but is composed from fragments and contradictions. The show at Martin-Gropius-Bau also features examples of her poetry and humorous fantastic design, jewellery and fashion designs. This video provides you with an exhibition walkthrough and an introduction to Meret Oppenheim’s work by Gereon Sievernich (Director, Martin-Gropius-Bau) and Heike Eipeldauer (exhibition curator). The Meret Oppenheim retrospective at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (Germany) runs until December 1, 2013.

Meret Oppenheim. Retrospective at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (Germany). Video walkthrough and interview with Gereon Sievernich (Director, Martin-Gropius-Bau) and Heike Eipeldauer (curator of the exhibition), August 15, 2013. Video by Frantisek Zachoval.

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“Meret Oppenheim was one of the first women artists who worked with the topics of masquerade, role play, of conventional roles of what a women needs to be and needs to do and she established a vocabulary that became very important for the next generations of feminist artists; and it was also her person: She lived without compromise. Without compromise to society, to functions a woman has to fulfill, without compromise towards the art market – she never developed a signature style, for example – and also towards special movements, also towards the feminist movement. So she was a very important identification figure for the feminist movement, but her credo was: art has no sex: Art is always female as well as male. Art is androgyne.”

(Heike Eipeldauer, exhibition curator)

“She was more an artist who used very many different approaches to doing works of art: she sculpted, she painted, she wrote poems, so she was one of these multimedia artists before we had these words; and I think she worked in a way, which made it maybe – at the time these works were made – difficult to understand her. I think now, with all these new developments in fine arts, in contemporary art, she can be understood much better than before. I think this is kind of a rediscovery.”

(Gereon Sievernich, Director Martin-Gropius-Bau).

Meret Oppenheim had a first retrospective at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1967), which heralds her first artistic breakthrough, bringing increasing international recognition. In 1982 she was honored with the Grand Prix of Berlin. In the same year she took part in Documenta 7th. In November 1985 Meret Oppenheim dies of a heart attack in Basel, Switzerland.

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