Bernd Hahn

Eleven years after his last major exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Dresden, and to mark his 70th birthday – which he would have celebrated in May – we presented a small retrospective of works by Bernd Hahn, which, with the exception of the photographs, encompassed all the artist’s body of work: paintings, drawings, collages, assemblages, prints and sculptures. The title of the exhibition is taken from a quote by the artist, who once said that the ‘agitation of poetry’ essentially describes the attitude underpinning all his work.

Bernd Hahn was born on 12 May 1954 in Neustadt, Saxony. After completing an apprenticeship as a construction worker and obtaining his Abitur, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1975 to 1979. In 1984, together with his fellow students Anton Paul Kammerer, Andreas Küchler and Jürgen Wenzel, he founded the B 53 studio collective and artists’ group. After 1990, his work gained recognition far beyond Dresden. From 1998 until his death on 10 March 2011, he lived and worked in Burgstädtel (in the municipality of Dohna) near Dresden.