From November 2016 until March 2017, Museum Berggruen shows an exhibition of works by American painter George Condo (b. 1957, Concord, New Hampshire). This first ever large-scale exhibition of contemporary art at Museum Berggruen since its opening combines works by George Condo from the early 1980s through today with works by classical modernist artists from the collection of Berlin’s Nationalgalerie.
The presentation of masterpieces by Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Klee and Giacometti from Museum Berggruen alongside Condo’s works develops an open field of references. Since the early 1980s, Condo refers in his works with a mixture of humor, irony, and veneration to the entire spectrum of European and American art. For his in part grotesque visual imagination, he takes up genres like the nude, the still life, and the portrait. Playfully, Condo combines references to art history, in particular formal and motivic references to the artists of classical modernism, whose once shocking cubist paintings have long since entered the canon of art history. To the same extent, popular culture also flows into Condo’s works: his portraits reveal borrowings from comic figures like Batman, Bugs Bunny, or Mickey Mouse.
