Inner Worlds: Sigmund Freud and Art

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, revolutionized the image of man at the beginning of the last century. His exploration of the "unconscious" became the engine of the European avant-garde of his time and like no other he shaped the culture of the 20th century. century. Thus, his idea that human feeling, thinking and acting is strongly influenced by the unconscious had co-founded the Europe-wide artist movement of surrealism at the beginning of the last century. Among the Expressionists, his soul science triggered a search for the self.

Inspired by Freud, in the immediate post-war period, artists of informal and abstract expressionism in Europe and in America also try to materialize the creative forces of the unconscious in painting. The exhibition, developed in cooperation with the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna, feels the reception of Freudian theories in the art of the 20th century. Century to the present day: From creative processes at the beginning of the last century that seek to materialize the inner worlds, to the existentialist approaches of the post-war period, to the conceptual art of the 1980s and to feminist positions of postmodernism, which sometimes also critically reflect the heritage of the thinker of psychoanalysis in the language of art.

An exhibition in cooperation with the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna

Curators: Dr. Nicole Fritz and Monika Pessler