MARKUS LÜPERTZ
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at Seventh Street, SW
May 24–September 10, 2017
Curated by Evelyn Hankins and Dorothy Kosinski, respectively
America’s capital is the place to be this summer for aficionados of postwar German art as yet unfamiliar with the extraordinary and provocative oeuvre of Markus Lüpertz. After more than five decades slugging it out in the studio daily, the artist, now age seventy-five, is finally being accorded his first retrospective in America—and in two major museums to boot! While the Phillips will present a full-scale overview of his work made between the early 1960s and the present, the Hirshhorn will put on display dozens of the artist’s seminal early paintings from 1962 to 1975. Marking the first collaboration between the two institutions, these exhibitions share a common aim: to reveal just how deeply intertwined Lüpertz’s work is with German history, particularly the nightmare years between 1933 and 1945. Together the two shows are bound to be not just explosive but enlightening.