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Lot Essay
Painted in 1983, Auf zum 38. Parteitag (Let's go to the 38th Party Conference) forms part of Jörg Immendorff's celebrated Café Deutschland series. One of sixteen large scale paintings from the artist's best known body of work, other examples are included in the collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York and, and Ludwig Museum, Berlin.
A particularly striking example in a vibrant palette of the red, black, and yellow of the German flag interrupted by vivid blue, Auf zum 38. Parteitag depicts a boisterous scene set at the fictional Café Deutschland nightclub on the east-west border of Germany. While the architecture for the series was inspired by from Renato Guttuso's Café Greco, the furniture and characters vary from painting to painting. Here, the buzzing crowd of the café features varied political figures throughout history including Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Intermingling amidst contemporary punk rockers, the suggestively posed figures recall the unruly parties that the artist was renowned for throughout the 1980s. The title suggesting an invitation to an imagined Communist rally never to materialize; the punk rockers rendering the political figures antiquated and awkward.
The shifting perspective reveals further surreal vignettes loaded with artifice and spectacle: the horse of Brandenburg Gate encircle the scene, while a devil figure looms menacingly in the top left corner. The madness and mayhem of Immendorff's tormented vision conveys the conflicting ideologies of East and West Germany at the time; the adopted socialist realist style representing the artistic divide between East and West Germany. Heavily laden with political iconography and imagery, the artist states the Café Deutschland address and represent 'the situation of a divided Germany, but they are... also about alienation. They represent my attempt to break through a wall - and not merely the one that separated the former East and West Germanies. How odd is that, despite the many ways we have of communicating with one another, we seem to be building up walls between ourselves rather than dismantling them. So the Café Deutschland paintings stand just as much for a then externally divided Germany as for the condition of an internally split man, who struggles to communicate not only with himself but also with his colleagues and lovers.' (J. Immendorff quoted in 'Interview with Pamela Kort', in Artforum, March 2003, vol. 41, no. 7).
A particularly striking example in a vibrant palette of the red, black, and yellow of the German flag interrupted by vivid blue, Auf zum 38. Parteitag depicts a boisterous scene set at the fictional Café Deutschland nightclub on the east-west border of Germany. While the architecture for the series was inspired by from Renato Guttuso's Café Greco, the furniture and characters vary from painting to painting. Here, the buzzing crowd of the café features varied political figures throughout history including Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Intermingling amidst contemporary punk rockers, the suggestively posed figures recall the unruly parties that the artist was renowned for throughout the 1980s. The title suggesting an invitation to an imagined Communist rally never to materialize; the punk rockers rendering the political figures antiquated and awkward.
The shifting perspective reveals further surreal vignettes loaded with artifice and spectacle: the horse of Brandenburg Gate encircle the scene, while a devil figure looms menacingly in the top left corner. The madness and mayhem of Immendorff's tormented vision conveys the conflicting ideologies of East and West Germany at the time; the adopted socialist realist style representing the artistic divide between East and West Germany. Heavily laden with political iconography and imagery, the artist states the Café Deutschland address and represent 'the situation of a divided Germany, but they are... also about alienation. They represent my attempt to break through a wall - and not merely the one that separated the former East and West Germanies. How odd is that, despite the many ways we have of communicating with one another, we seem to be building up walls between ourselves rather than dismantling them. So the Café Deutschland paintings stand just as much for a then externally divided Germany as for the condition of an internally split man, who struggles to communicate not only with himself but also with his colleagues and lovers.' (J. Immendorff quoted in 'Interview with Pamela Kort', in Artforum, March 2003, vol. 41, no. 7).