I Got Rhythm: Art and Jazz Since 1920

In the 1920s and 1930s jazz from the United States took Europe by storm, conquering the ballrooms and dance halls, bars and cafés, music halls and movie houses. The new music was the first popular phenomenon—it was pop before pop existed—and enthralled the bohemian world and affluent middle class as much as it did adolescents and intellectuals.

With works by major artists such as Otto Dix, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, K.R.H. Sonderborg, A.R. Penck, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the exhibition »I Got Rhythm. Art and Jazz since 1920« will demonstrate how jazz provoked a remarkable response in the art scene throughout the twentieth century. Even today there is an abundance of examples demonstrating the influence that jazz has on artistic processes, ideas, and production.

A selection of works from the 1920s into the present day will exemplify the close connections and interplay between jazz and artistic trends of the period. On display will be diverse artistic explorations of jazz, starting with paintings of classic modern period continuing with works of European and American postwar abstraction and culminating in contemporary installations and video pieces.

As an accompaniment to the works on display, curated music stations will provide an aural survey of the history of jazz in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Supplemented by an extensive accompanying program of concerts and events, »I Got Rhythm« is set to be an absolute cultural highlight of the year 2015.