Konferenz: Baselitz, Immendorff, Lüpertz, Penck

16 May 2026 Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg

Jörg Immendorff, Konferenz über Plastik oder Anarchie in der Galerie (Conference on Sculpture or Anarchy in the Gallery), 1985. © The Estate of Jörg Immendorff
Comprised of over 50 significant works by Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz and A.R. Penck, the exhibition joins four celebrated post-war German artists with unique and groundbreaking methods of exploring national identity during a time of political fracture.
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Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg is pleased to announce the group exhibition, Konferenz: Baselitz, Immendorff, Lüpertz, Penck. Comprised of over 50 significant works by Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz and A.R. Penck, the exhibition joins four celebrated post-war German artists with unique and groundbreaking methods of exploring national identity during a time of political fracture. Critically intertwined after a period of simultaneous representation by gallerist Michael Werner, each artist rejected any fidelity to a specific style, and together offer a broad understanding of generational concerns in the decades prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Konferenz… includes work from Baselitz's former collection of his contemporaries, supplemented with archival photographs by Edward Quinn taken during his visits to Baselitz in the 1980s when the artist lived and worked at Schloss Derneburg.
Jörg Immendorff. Konferenz über Plastik oder Anarchie in der Galerie (Conference on Sculpture or Anarchy in the Gallery), 1985. Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photo: Adam Reich © The Estate of Jörg Immendorff

In his work, Jörg Immendorff often incorporated recognizable portraits of friends and colleagues, as well as historical figures, as a means of confronting authority both geopolitical and within the art world. The communal settings of his paintings - in theaters, cafés, galleries - gathered figures in active debate and suggests a worldview that required meeting together around a table. In the painting Konferenz über Plastik oder Anarchie in der Galerie (1985), Immendorff paints himself twice (seated and in the act of making sculpture) alongside Baselitz, Penck, and Werner. Made prior to a one-time collaborative event at Werner's gallery in 1989, Immendorff's painting represents a manifestation yet to be realized. In four Untitled drawings made by Immendorff the following year, each artist is symbolized as a different season (Immendorff as Spring, Lüpertz as Summer, Baselitz as Fall, and Penck as Winter).
Georg Baselitz. Ciao America II, 1988. Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. © Georg Baselitz 2026

During the 1980s, Georg Baselitz continued his pursuit of new images, breaking from the representational portraits and landscapes made in the previous decade. Within Immendorff's portraits, Baselitz is often depicted with an open palm holding a miniature sculpture turned on its head, a reference to Baselitz's iconic compositional and conceptual innovation of inverting his motifs, an approach that defied ideological allegiance to any one style. In the painting Ciao America II (1988), yellow birds painted in limited strokes are seemingly contained only by the structure of the image, filling the canvas to its margins between horizontal crosshatched bands in black suggestive of an aviary. Baselitz's interpretation strays in color and form, pursuing an all-over image with no dominant focal point, central motif or sense of depth. The selection of Baselitz's work will include landscape, portraiture and still life from the same period, some of which were created at Schloss Derneburg, Baselitz's home and studio for thirty years (1976-2006).
Markus Lüpertz. Sechs Bilder aus dem Leben eines Dichters: IV. Ohne Titel (Six Images from the Life of a Poet: IV. Untitled), 1981. Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photo: Timothy Doyon © VG-Bild Kunst, Bonn 2025

Markus Lüpertz, who Immendorff often depicted in harlequin-patterned clothing, built an early iconography around a poetic symbolism of helmets, railways, and tree stumps. His earliest paintings embraced a flattened pictorial space partially due to economically available dispersion paint. By the 1980s Lüpertz was working more often in oil, but with an eye towards European modernism. Sechs Bilder aus dem Leben eines Dichters: IV. Ohne Titel (1981) is a still life that displays a cubist sense of composition and collage, while the title suggests a continuation of the artist's passion for poetry. The painting is presented alongside a rarely exhibited group of drawings from the same period that highlight Lüpertz's innovation towards forms within a surreal landscape.
A.R. Penck. Idol für Deutschland (Idol for Germany), 1982. Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photo: Jeffrey Nintzel Photography © VG-Bild Kunst, Bonn 2025

Since A.R. Penck emigrated from East Germany in 1980, he was an occasional guest at Schloss Derneburg. Like his colleagues, Penck was drawn early to a combination of figuration and abstraction as a conceptual means of addressing Germany's national divide. Baselitz and Lüpertz both met Penck early, while Werner helped smuggle his work from Dresden to be exhibited and sold. When Penck later met Immendorff, the two often collaborated with a focus on the cultural climate of the Cold War, and in Immendorff's portraits, Penck is routinely depicted with an iceberg. On the occasion of this exhibition, Penck's monumental wood totem Idol für Deutschland (1982) returns to Schloss Derneburg, where it was displayed in the building's entryway for many years during Baselitz's ownership. His large-scale sculptures symbolize a period when all four artists were celebrated and routinely exhibited together, collaboratively defining the zeitgeist both within Germany and internationally.

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Edward Quinn. Photograph of Georg Baselitz with Michael Werner and Ciao America II. Schloss Derneburg, 1988

© edwardquinn.com & Hall Art Foundation. Artwork: © Georg Baselitz 2026
Artist Biographies

Jörg Immendorff. Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1990. Gouache, ink, black crayon and pencil on paper. Individual works, each: 23-1/2 x 16-1/2 in. (59.5 x 42 cm). Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photos: Timothy Doyon. © The Estate of Jörg Immendorff

Georg Baselitz (b. 1938, Deutschbaselitz; lives and works in Ammersee; Salzburg, Austria; Imperia, Italy) is exhibited annually worldwide, most recently including BASELITZ - AVANTI!, Museo Novecento, Florence (2026); Baselitz Now and Baselitz Manifestos, MdM Salzburg (2026); Paintings 2014-2025. Something Everywhere, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao (2025); Georg Baselitz: A Life In Print, KODE Bergen (2025); Georg Baselitz: The Last Ten Years, Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul (2024); Georg Baselitz - Belle Haleine, Galleria degli Antichi, Sabbioneta (2024); Georg Baselitz - Sculptures 2011-2015, Serpentine Gallery, London (2023); Baselitz - Naked Masters, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2023); Georg Baselitz: Six Decades of Drawings, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York (2022) and 100 Zeichnungen Albertina, Vienna (2023); Baselitz - The retrospective, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021); and Baselitz - Academy, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice (2019).
Jörg Immendorff. Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1990. Gouache, ink, black crayon and pencil on paper. Individual works, each: 23-1/2 x 16-1/2 in. (59.5 x 42 cm). Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photos: Timothy Doyon. © The Estate of Jörg Immendorff

Jörg Immendorff (b. 1945, Bleckede; d. 2007, Düsseldorf) most recent solo exhibitions included Jörg Immendorff: The Task of the Painter, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2019); Jörg Immendorff: For All Beloved in the World, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2018); and Jörg Immendorff: Les théâtres de la peinture, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence (2015). In 2026, the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf will mount a new exhibition. Other notable exhibitions were held at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut (Frankfurt), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt), Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich), The British Museum (London), The Phillips Collection (Washington) and the Musée de l'Art Modene de la Ville Paris.
Jörg Immendorff. Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1990. Gouache, ink, black crayon and pencil on paper. Individual works, each: 23-1/2 x 16-1/2 in. (59.5 x 42 cm). Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photos: Timothy Doyon. © The Estate of Jörg Immendorff

Markus Lüpertz (b. 1941, Liberec; lives and works in Düsseldorf and Berlin) has been exhibiting extensively since 1973. Recent exhibitions include Maillol - Lüpertz, A Lineage, Musée Maillol (2025); Markus Lüpertz: Sins, Myths and Other Questions, Heredium, Daejeon (2024); Markus Lüpertz, Palazzo Loredan, Venice (2022); and Markus Lüpertz, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans (2022). Earlier surveys were held at the Haus der Kunst, Munich; Palazzo Loredan, Venice; Hirshhorn Museum and Phillips Collection, Washington DC; the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Gementeemuseum, The Hague, and the Hermitage State Museum, St. Petersburg.
Jörg Immendorff. Ohne Titel (Untitled), 1990. Gouache, ink, black crayon and pencil on paper. Individual works, each: 23-1/2 x 16-1/2 in. (59.5 x 42 cm). Hall Collection. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation. Photos: Timothy Doyon. © The Estate of Jörg Immendorff

A.R. Penck (b. 1939, Dresden; d. 2017, Zurich) participated in the 1984 Venice Biennale as well as in Documenta 5, 6, 7 and 9. Recent solo exhibitions include A.R. Penck: Pictures From The Ice Age, Neues Museum Nürnberg (2023); A.R. Penck, Museum Jorn, Silkeborg (2022); and A.R. Penck, Museo d'Arte di Mendrisio, Mendrisio (2021). Numerous solo exhibitions worldwide include Kunsthalle Bern; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fondation Maeght, St. Paul, France; and Fosun Foundation, Shanghai.
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From 16 May 2026