MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

The first documenta was held between 15 July and 18 September 1955 in Kassel, Germany. Although close to the Latin word – documentum meaning: a lesson or warning, the title of the exhibition is an invented word that was supposed to embody the intention to be a documentation of modern art. Having revealed artworks which were deprived from public view during the Nazi regime, it was the first major event to present avant-garde art in Germany since the infamous Entartete Kunstexhibition (1937). Held in the newly restored and whitewashed halls of the Museum Fridericianum, a creation of the German Enlightenment, which had been almost completely destroyed during the war and then restored, documenta sought to symbolise Germany’s re-opening to the cultures of the world. Arnold Bode, the founder and curator of the first exhibition, aimed to present a genealogy of modern art and the universality of its language. The exhibition centred on the European abstract painting of the first decades of the 20th century, and the catalogue of the first documenta includes a celebratory section of plates with photographs of leading modernist artists. The most international part of the exhibition included a series of photographs of archaic sculptures from all around the world.