The Berlinische Galerie is showing an extensive retrospective of Berlin based artist Dorothy Iannone (*1933, Boston) with the title “Dorothy Iannone. This Sweetness Outside of Time. Paintings, Objects, Books 1959-2014“ curated by Dr. Annelie Lütgens.

The aim of this retrospective is to illustrate the intermediality and radical subjectivity of this unique artistic opus and to make the innovative energy in the art of Dorothy Iannone known to a wider audience. This major solo exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie, bringing together loans from museums and private collections elsewhere in Germany and Europe, will be the first to address all aspects of an opus rich in splendour, humour and the erotic, shifting the focus again to one of the most unusual female artists of the 20th/21st century.

The American Dorothy Iannone occupies a distinct place as an artist in the second half of the 20th century. Her œuvre, which now spans more than fifty years, includes painting and visual narrative, autobiographical texts and films. Since the 1960s she has been seen as a pioneering spirit against censorship, for free love and autonomous female sexuality. She continues to go her own way without compromise, artistically and conceptually.

Dorothy Iannone’s great theme is ecstatic love. The paintings, visual narratives, texts and books by this pioneer of women’s sexual and intellectual emancipation draw uncompromisingly on her own life. Iannone’s art frequently fell foul of the censors because of allegedly pornographic content. And yet her depictions of the sexual union between man and woman have an unmistakably mystical dimension rooted in the spiritual and physical union of opposites. This anchors her visual universe within cultural history and lends a modern, personal interpretation to Eastern religions, including Tibetan Buddhism, Indian Tantrism and Christian ecstatic traditions like those of the seventeenth-century Baroque.

A catalogue entitled „Dorothy Iannone. This Sweetness Outside of Time. 1959-2014“ will be published by Berlinische Galerie at Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld. With an introduction by Dr. Thomas Köhler (Director of the Berlinische Galerie), an interview from Maurizio Cattelan with the artist along with essays by Dr. Annelie Lütgens and Jan-Frederik Bandel including images of the work and rare biographical material this publication will document Dorothy Iannone’s oeuvre from the sixties to the present day.

The exhibition is accompanied by a side program with movie screenings, readings and a concert which will begin on February 24th.