Gruppe SPUR and Gruppe GEFLECHT: Art and Dissent in West Germany, 1957-1968.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the diverse interventionist art practices of Gruppe SPUR and Gruppe GEFLECHT. The artists pushed the boundaries of freedom of expression and explored the role of critical and oppositional art during changes in West German culture, politics and society from the “economic miracle” years through the protest movements of 1968. I demonstrate that Gruppe SPUR was the first collaborative utopian artist group in Cold War West Germany to create a new expanded notion of art to engage diverse audiences, redefine traditional conceptions of art and politics, transform social values, and challenge the authoritarian tendencies within the German state, church and society. Gruppe SPUR’s unique aesthetic practices enlisted an interplay among multiple mediums such as painting, sculpture, drawing, etching, lithography, collage, site-specific work, and films; the self-production of magazines, manifestos and flyers; and the performance of actions in everyday life.

In response to the emergence of pop art and the rapid transformation of European art markets and the West German independent gallery systems, the artists of SPUR and WIR changed their artistic strategies and formed Gruppe GEFLECHT in 1966. The GEFLECHT artists’ adopted collective production and developed a singular group style in the form of their new aesthetic category, called the “anti-object,” which was an attempt to actualize their utopian aspirations to bridge the boundaries between art and life. This dissertation argues that the anti-object’s formal language of interconnecting channeled networks embodied the principles of openness, experimentation, freedom, and anti-hierarchical relations, which were the same values that the GEFLECHT artists advocated for as participants in student protests at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste and the wider anti-authoritarian extra-parliamentary opposition in Munich from 1967-1970. Through a detailed historical and visual analysis of these two case studies, several broader issues central to artistic production during the 1950s and 1960s are explored: abstraction and figuration; individual, collaborative and collective artistic production; international avant-garde networks; and the role of art and artists in political, cultural and social transformation.