Running until 31 August, the British Museum will play host to six German artists whose extraordinary body of work is on loan from Count Christian Duerckheim and seen in this country for the first time. The artists featured are Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Blinky Palermo, A R Penck, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter.

The majority of the work is by Baselitz and follows his development from the 1960s to the late 70s. On 11 April, Baselitz work will be discussed Sir Norman Rosenthal who was instrumental in bringing this artist’s work to the UK by organising the first retrospective of his work at the Royal Academy in 2007.

Originally from East Germany, all the artists exhibited were highly influenced by the post war guilt felt by many in Germany after the Second World War and trained in art in a divided country. All then migrated to Western Germany and it is here that they established their careers. The donation of 34 of the works to the British Museum by Count Christian Duerckheim now means that it holds a chronological collection of German work dating from modern day to the 15th century.

The event will also see the screening on 6 April of the collective response from 1978 by 11 German filmmakers to the violence of 1977 by the Red Army Faction. This opportunity to see a rare film includes work from Alf Brustellin, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Maximiliane Mainka, Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus, Peter Schubert, Bernhard Sinkel, Hans Peter Cloos, Edgar Reitz, Katja Rupé, Volker Schlöndorff.

For more information about the exhibition and the events taking place please see: www.britishmuseum.org

Credit
1.Ohne Titel (Selbstportrat), (‘Untitled (Self-portrait)’), 1975, A.R. Penck .Presented to the British Museum by Count Christian Duerckheim © A.R. Penck/DACS 2013