Messages from “Over There"

Twenty-five years after the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall, today’s exhibition takes a look at the startling history of poster art in East Germany. The show reflects the visualization of ideological biases in poster form, while also revealing the technical and artistic accomplishments made in poster art in the period 1949–1990, often against all the odds and in spite of artistic oppression, material scarcity, and a lack of sophisticated printing technology. This tension between the political and the artistic is illuminated in exhibition chapters devoted to different periods and the themes of propaganda, product advertising, and art and culture.