Neue Nationalgalerie Acquires 1960s Painting
Berlin, Germany
We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Kiki Kogelnik’s Siempre Por Tio (1964) by the Freunde der Nationalgalerie for the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Kogelnik’s painting is included in the section Freeing the Body as part of the Neue Nationalgalerie’s current collection based exhibition Extreme Tension. Art between Politics and Society. Collection of the Nationalgalerie 1945-2000, which explores the central artistic and societal themes from the 20th century.
Siempre Por Tio belongs to a group of works where Kiki Kogelnik began to address the alterations or modifications that the human body would have to undergo to exist in outer space, which reference the robot and the cyborg. In 1964, she wrote to Manuel Ulloa Elías, whose silhouette dominates the painting’s composition: “To your heart I would be most tender and your beautiful brown liver I would caress.” These organs appear to be in process of being removed from the newly divided body while key joints – elbows, arm sockets, hips and knees – are replaced with mechanical nuts and bolts; the letter “K”, located near the heart, claims ownership.