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” demonstrated 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 exemplified the close connections and interplay between jazz and artistic trends of the period. On display were 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.