Martin Gropius-Bau
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
10963 Berlin

“Freedom is not given to you ”” you have to take it.”

Berin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau gallery presents a retrospective of the Berlin born Swiss surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim. Working with the likes of André Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, the artist sat at he forefront of the surrealist movement (often literally, she was the nude model behind the printing press in Man Ray’s Erotique voilée); though her work not as widely recognised, she represented a driving force in innovation and experimentation. “Language, myths, games and dreams” drawing focus in her work, the latter something she is noted having recorded since a young age, her alternative attitude and critical approach to social stereotyping, gender and identity made her an influential figure to future generations of women artists.

“For women, the implications are that they have to live their own female life as well as the female life that men project on them. Thus, they are woman times two. That’s too much.”

The exhibition presents a comprehensive range of works from paintings, sketches, sculptures, and masks, to clothing, jewellery and furniture from Kunstmuseum Bern, home of the Meret Oppenheim Archive and private collections from the likes of art dealer Ursula Hauser and musician David Bowie.

Meret Oppenheim – Negative of X-Ray of Meret Oppenheimer’s Skull, 1964

Man Ray – Erotique voilée, Meret Oppenheim

Man Ray – (d’après) Erotique voilée, Meret Oppenheim

The exhibition will run until December 1st, 2013