A National Gallery

Michael Werner is one of the most internationally influential gallerists of the post-war era. His first exhibition in 1963 caused a scandal, as did many that followed. Yet his aim was never provocation for its own sake, but always the potential of art to resist rigid structures and assert its own reality.

In this book, Werner reflects on his childhood during the Second World War and the struggles of finding his own path. He speaks of the artists with whom he worked, quarreled, spectacularly failed, and achieved great success. Together with numerous photographs and documents, his accounts not only form an impressive historical record; they also demonstrate that the artistic tensions that erupted at that time are far from over.

Michael Werner, born in 1939, is a German art dealer and gallerist. His Michael Werner Gallery, now based in Berlin and having maintained presence in Cologne, London, New York, Paris, and Athens throughout its long history, is among the most internationally influential galleries of the post-war era. Through his gallery, he was instrumental in establishing artists such as Georg Baselitz, A. R. Penck, Markus Lüpertz, Jörg Immendorff, Per Kirkeby, Marcel Broodthaers, and Sigmar Polke.

Nils Emmerichs, born in 1988, studied art history and philosophy in Düsseldorf, Basel, and Karlsruhe. He earned his doctorate on the influence of the visual arts on the work of Heiner Müller. For the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, he supervised and curated exhibitions by Michael Majerus, Olaf Nicolai, and Andreas Schulze, and conceived a series of events with Rosemarie Trockel. As an author and editor, he has published texts on Marcel Odenbach, Leiko Ikemura, Ulrich Rückriem, and A. R. Penck, among others.