Sculpture in West and East Germany
“We are in the Sculpture Hall. where our display presents the history of modern sculpture from Auguste Rodin to the present day. Modern sculpture has its origins in Rodin’s works – which is worth mentioning here since, in a certain way, he was a point of reference for sculpture as it developed in the GDR after 1945. The sculptors working in East Germany also had other sources of inspiration, other precursors, other sculptors they looked to – and also other French sculptors, such as Aristide Maillol, whose works are also on show here.
Sculptors in East Germany continued to base their work on the human figure – a fundamental and major difference to sculpture as it developed in West Germany. In the post-war years, after the twentieth century’s great catastrophe, West German sculptors felt it was impossible to create works depicting unscathed human figures. As a result, sculpture evolved differently in West and East Germany – as non-figurative in the former, and figurative in the latter. Directly after 1945, abstract art in eastern Germany was initially condemned as formalistic and decadent. This was an accusation similarly levied against abstract painting in the early years of the GDR, when the official aim of art was to depict a particular new human image regarded as programmatic in the GDR – the image of the worker. Socialist Realism developed later – and that development also partially applied to sculpture.”