MANNHEIM.- It is ten years after the peak of the 2008 global financial crisis, which shook the economies of Europe and America to their foundations and has had a lasting impact on our lives in the present. The special autumn exhibition Constructing the World: Art and Economy sheds light on the dramatic influence of the economy on art for the first time, comparing global visual art between the two World Wars (1919–1939) and in the present (2008–2018).

The first part of the exhibition (1919–39) displays economic phenomena in the classical modernism of the 1920s and 1930s, with a focus on Germany, Russia, and the US. Starting out with New Objectivity, a term coined at Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925, the exhibition observes a similar rediscovery of contemporary realism in the socialist Soviet Union and in the US – an orientation towards the object and the present.

“Kunsthalle Mannheim is the first museum to venture into this ambitious international comparison of visual art from three countries with diametrically opposed political and economic systems during the inter-war period,” explains Dr. Ulrike Lorenz, Director of Kunsthalle Mannheim.

The second part of the exhibition (2008–2018) turns to the immediate present, in which globalization, digitalization and the international financial crisis have motivated many artists to passionate creative expression. “When historical materials meet engaged art of the present, the viewer is led through a world in dramatic flux; a world of individuals and work in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” says Dr. Sebastian Baden, curator of contemporary art at the Kunsthalle. “The crucial questions for us are: How do economics and art influence each other? What social explosiveness can be seen here?” 150 artists and collectives from over 20 countries convey their own pressing questions in a total of 250 paintings, films, photographs, collages, multimedia installations, and performances, describing these phenomena which, in the present day, are more explosive than ever.

Highlights from the exhibition’s pieces include “Grey Day” by George Grosz, Ekaterina S. Zernova’s “Tinned Fish Factory” (1927), Alexander Deineka’s “Construction of New Workshops” (1926) from Moscow, Hans Grundig’s “Hunger March (Café Republik)” (1923) from Dresden, Charles Sheeler’s film “Manhatta” (1920), “American Tragedy (Memorial Day Massacre)” (1936–37) by Philip Evergood, Konstantin A. Vialov’s “Motorcycle Race” (1923–25) from the Tretjakov Gallery Moscow, and “Cotton Pickers” (1935) by Jackson Pollock from the Albright-Knox Gallery, a stylistically surprising little-known early work. Edward Hopper’s “Apartment Houses” (1923) also features.

Participating artists include Berenice Abbott, Maja Bajevic, Margaret BourkeWhite, Bureau d’Etudes, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Stuart Davis, Alexander Deineka, Otto Dix, Walker Evans, Harun Farocki/Antje Ehmann, Carl Grossberg, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Hirschhorn, Hannah Höch, Edward Hopper, Sanja Iveković, George Grosz, Grethe Jürgens, Gustavs Klucis, Valentina Kulagina, Alicja Kwade, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, El Lissitzky, José Antonio Vega Macotela, Reginald Marsh, Juri Pimenow, Tobias Rehberger, Alexander Rodtschenko, Mika Rottenberg, Rudolf Schlichter, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Charles Sheeler, Superflex, Zefrey Throwell, Karl Völckers, Dziga Vertov, and many others.