Documenta - History

History

Initiator of documenta 1, the first documenta, was art professor and designer Arnold Bode from Kassel. Originally planned as a secondary event to accompany the Bundesgartenschau, he achieved to attract more than 130,000 visitors in 1955. The first exhibition centred less on "contemporary art“, that is art after 1945, instead, Bode rather wanted to show the public the works of those artists which had been known as "Entartete Kunst" in Germany during the Nazi era: Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Blauer Reiter, Futurism and Pittura Metafisica. Therefore, abstract art, in particular the abstract paintings of the 1920s and 1930s were the focus of interest in this exhibition.

Over time, the focus shifted to contemporary art. At first, the show was limited on works from Europe, but it soon covered works of artists from the Americas, Africa and Asia. Documenta IV, the first ever to turn a profit, featured a selection of Pop Art, Minimal Art, and Kinetic Art. Adopting the theme of Questioning Reality -- Pictorial Worlds Today, the 1972 documenta radically redefined what could be considered art by featuring minimal and conceptual art, marking a turning point in the public acceptance of those styles. Also, it devoted a large section to the work of Adolf Wolfli, the great Swiss outsider, then unknown. Joseph Beuys performed repeatedly under the auspices of his utopian Organization for Direct Democracy. Certain key political dates for wide-reaching social and cultural upheavals, such as 1945, 1968 or 1976/77, became chronological markers of documenta X (1997), along which art's political, social, cultural and aesthetic exploratory functions were traced. Documenta XI was organized around themes like migration, urbanization and the post-colonial experience, with documentary photography, film and video as well as works from far-flung locales holding the spotlight. In 2012, documenta XIII was described as "rdently feminist, global and multimedia in approach and including works by dead artists and selected bits of ancient art".