The Sprengel Museum Hannover is dedicating an extensive exhibition to the development of the work of Horst Antes, one of the most influential German artists of the postwar period. The exhibition offers a concentrated look at an oeuvre that has repeatedly explored the boundaries of figurative and abstract visual language over the decades.
Horst Antes (born 1936) is one of the central protagonists of the German postwar avant-garde. His artistic career is inextricably linked to the search for an independent visual language between figuration and abstraction: in his paintings, drawings, and sculptural works, the human figure appears as a reduced yet expressive form, often channeled through formal rigor and rhythmic composition. His work is characterized by a recurring exploration of the human form—not as a naturalistic representation, but as a vehicle for movement, posture, and inner tension.
The exhibition at the Sprengel Museum brings together key works from various creative phases and reveals the development of an artistic cosmos in which difference, repetition, and reflexive form-finding interpenetrate. In addition to early works that are still rooted in the context of the 1960s, the show also features later positions in which Antes experiments with colors, lines, and spatial relationships. The reduction of his figures, their rhythmic placement in the pictorial space, and the balance between structure and spontaneous gesture make the work an experience that is both analytical and sensual.
HORST ANTES at the Sprengel Museum offers a focused perspective on an artistic life that, in its recurring questions about form, identity, and image creation, bridges the gap between classical modernism and contemporary art practice. The exhibition invites visitors to experience the tension between deliberately chosen form and organic narrative power in images that linger long in the mind with their clarity and complexity.
April 11 to July 5, 2026
