ABSTRACT
The art historian Wieland Schmied observes, “Düsseldorf is a thoroughly western city, in a sense the point of entry for new developments, especially those that came from Paris and later New York. At the same time Düsseldorf is the place where the rst attempt is made to come to terms with them, to measure up to them”.1 In the late 1960s a vibrant art and music scene sprang up in Düsseldorf round about the Staatliche Kunstakademie, which linked together several important scenes including the Social Sculpture of Joseph Beuys (Professor of Monumental Sculpture between 1961 and 1972) and his students, the German pop art Capitalist Realist group and the proto-punk scene at art bar Ratinger Hof. Hans Strelow, who together with Konrad Fischer curated the important Prospect international exhibitions of minimal art and earth art at the newly opened Kunsthalle Düsseldorf from 1968 onward, remembered that in the late 1960s, “Düsseldorf had a good reputation as an art city due to the art academy, the ZERO group,2 Joseph Beuys, [the art dealer Alfred] Schmela. Düsseldorf was the most interesting city in Germany as regards contemporary art and it offered an international stage”.3
