Berlin as a hub between east and west
Constructivism in the 1920s

At the beginning of the 1920s Berlin became a cultural hub between East and West, a meeting place for artists from Germany, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe. They shared a commitment to a modern, abstract art that was based on rational construction rather than subjective emotion. The works evolving in this way displayed geometric forms, clear colours and industrial materials and so celebrated the aesthetics of a new age. Influenced by revolutionary ideas from Russia, the artist saw himself as an engineer whose work permeated society as a whole, no longer serving to edify only a few. A milestone of Constructivism in Berlin was the “First Russian Art Exhibition”, which took place in Galerie van Diemen, Unter den Linden, in 1922.