The documenta exhibitions

d11 2002

With his team of six co-curators from six different countries, artistic director Okwui Enwezor, the first not to have come from Europe, demonstrated an open-minded and truly international approach to the world for Documenta11. As envisaged in the original concept ...

dX 1997

In 1997, Catherine David was the first women to be appointed artistic director of a documenta – the last before our transition to the new millennium. This led David to use as a central motif the idea of “looking back into the future”. She presented ...

d9 1992

JJan Hoet, artistic director of documenta 9 in 1992, described the exhibition as “a documenta of locations” and one based “solely on the artist and his work”. In not pursuing a theoretical concept with documenta 9, or offering a general thematic context, Hoet effectively broke with a documenta principle that ...

d8 1987

The eighth documenta in 1987 was also the second to be organized by Manfred Schneckenburger as artistic director. It concentrated on examining art's social relevance in the field of conflict between independence and intervention, and sought to explore the points of contact between design, art and architecture. However, ...

d7 1982

Rudi Fuchs, the artistic director of documenta 7 in 1982, wanted to free art of the “various constraints and social parodies it is caught up in.” Nor should the exhibition be restricted by a theoretical concept. The works of art should be able to ...

d6 1977

documenta 6 of 1977 faced the task of formulating an independent, new definition of the concept of the thematic exhibition following the extensive, encyclopaedic concept the preceding documenta adopted. The media concept of d6, devised by artistic director Manfred Schneckenburger, attempted to ...

d5 1972

documenta 5 in 1972 was regarded as the most important caesura in the history of the documenta thus far, as from now on the exhibition was placed under the aegis of an artistic director. As a response to the increasing complications arising from the ...

d4 1968

the run-up to documenta 4 in 1968 was riddled with debate and controversy, with the key question being the very future of the documenta. The politicization of society in the late 1960s also made itself felt in Kassel – red flags and groups of people chanting slogans meant that the opening speeches could not be held. Moreover, internally documenta 4 underwent a generational conflict and a debate on ...

d3 1964

"Art is what major artists make.“ This was the motto of documenta 3 in 1964. Werner Haftmann again tried to justify his hypothesis on the primacy of pre-War Modernism and for the last time the show centered on the older generation of artists with selected works, documenting ...

d2 1959

Based on the success of the first show, the second documenta in 1959 was already made an institution: it was now organized by a limited liability company and the conceptual realization spread among a larger number of art historians. These experts now focused on the post-War period, programmatically subtitling the exhibition "Art after 1945". 1945 was conceived not only as a political caesura. On the basis of ...

d1 1955

The first documenta, created by Kassel painter and academy professor Arnold Bode in 1955, was an unexpected world success. The exhibition, which was launched as the accompanying program to ...