history

In 1916, with the First World War raging, the kestnergesellschaft was founded by citizens of Hanover, among them Hermann Bahlsen, August Madsack and Fritz Beindorff. Their goal was to bring internationally renowned and innovative artists and their current works to Hanover. The first exhibition, consisting of Max Liebermann’s new work, represented in 1916 the critical starting point for this concept. The first director, Paul Küppers, stated at the time that the aim was to present artworks which “do not simply function as a relaxing amusement but instead have a stimulating and – if necessary –provocative and scandalizing effect.”

In 1936, the kestnergesellschaft was closed under pressure from Hitler’s National Socialist government. The director at the time, Justus Bier, a Jew, presented artists Erich Heckel, Gerhard Marcks, Christian Rohlfs and August Macke – artists who only one year later were banned in the notorious “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich. Soon after the war, the new kestnergesellschaft was opened in the Warmbüchenstraßse by public service-minded Hanoverians in 1948, among them Hermann Bahlsen, Wilhelm Stichweh, Bernhard Sprengel and Günther Beindorff, the director of the Pelikan Works. In the 1990s, this building could no longer meet the high technical demands of modern exhibition operations, and the kestnergesellschaft looked for a new domicile. The former Goseriede swimming pool complex in the citycentre was chosen, and a team of internationally selected architects designed and oversaw the transformation into a modern exhibition house.

The list of artists whose works have been exhibited during the 75-year history – excluding the years of closure – reads like a "Who’s Who" in the history of 20th and 21st century art. Among them Paul Klee (1920), Wassily Kandinsky (1923), El Lissitzky (1923) and Kurt Schwitters (1924), both of whom were bound in friendship to the kestnergesellschaft, Joan Miró (1952, 1956, 1989), Jean Dubuffet (1960), Marcel Duchamp (1965), Pablo Picasso (1973, 1993), Georg Baselitz (1987), Joseph Beuys (1975, 1990), Andy Warhol (1981, his first retrospective in Germany, 2001), Richard Prince (1991), Rebecca Horn (1978, 1991, 1997), Antoni Tàpies (1962, 1998), Jonathan Meese (2002), Thomas Ruff (2003) and Peter Doig (2004).