Opening on Sunday, September 22, 2024, 12 noon
When the Kommunale Galerie opened on Hohenzollerndamm in the fall of 1974, it joined the network of municipal galleries in Berlin, which also included the Haus am Kleistpark in Schöneberg and the Künstlerhaus Bethanien on Mariannenplatz in Kreuzberg.
Image gallery
Fassadengestaltung der Kommunalen Galerie Berlin, Niko Schulz und Barbara Oldenburg, 1975
Ernst von Hopffgarten, Löwenbrunnen, Aufstellung 1981 vor der Kommunalen Galerie Berlin
Riverboat (Hohenzollerndamm 174 –177, Berlin-Wilmersdorf)
Under the direction of Udo Christoffel, an art and culture location was created from 1974 with exhibition space on two floors, a children's gallery and, from the 1980s, an art library.
The lettering "Kommunale Galerie", designed in the then popular pump-triline typography, characterized the simple office façade and stood for a diverse program of exhibitions, events and activities that enabled encounters between artists and an art-loving public.
This location on Fehrbelliner Platz, surrounded by administrative buildings, quickly developed into a vibrant center of the West Berlin art scene and became a popular meeting place for exhibition openings in the 1970s and 1980s.
The opening event was the exhibition “The Portrait as a Commission” with works by the Berlin realists Johannes Grützke, Manfred Bluth and Carl Timner, followed by a show with Walter Stöhrer, a representative of abstract expressionism from the “Group 62”. The Rixdorfer Drucker collective, Polish poster art and many Berlin artists as well as guest projects from the Bonn Women's Museum also found their place here.
Today the gallery is characterized by a diverse program that includes painting, photography, graphics, video, performance and installations in changing exhibitions, with a particular focus on artistic photography.
It supports artists who live and work in Berlin, promotes cultural initiatives and gives a broad public access to current art events, reflecting the cultural diversity of the city.
In the future, the gallery will remain true to its founding idea: to make contemporary art accessible to a broad audience and to open up innovative ways of communicating art.
For the 50th anniversary, three exhibitions will be presented that impressively reflect the gallery's long-standing program:
- Mahlzeit Field research at Fehrbelliner Platz
- POLYPHONIE - Art in West Berlin / 70s
- Zeitgeist
Welcome to the opening on Sunday, September 22, 2024, 12 noon
- Heike Schmitt-Schmelz | District Councilor
- Elke von der Lieth | Kommunale Galerie Berlin
