Berlin, for the first time reconstructed Mnemosyne, Warburg's figurative atlas

For the first time since 1929, Aby Warburg’s entire figurative atlas Mnemosyne, with all sixty-three plates, will be on display in Berlin

The public will thus have the opportunity to view the last documented 1929 version of the famous atlas with the original illustrations, thanks to the collaboration with the Warburg Institute in London and the curatorship of Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil. The two curators located most of the 971 illustrations among the 400,000 works in the Warburg Institute’s photographic collection and library, with the goal of showing his unfinished masterpiece in its entirety for the first time since the passing of the renowned German art critic and historian.

The original plates for Mnemosyne will return to Germany for two very important exhibitions: at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Sept. 4 to Nov. 30, 2020) all sixty-three plates will be brought together using Warburg’s original materials, and also at the Gemäldegalerie (Aug. 8 to Nov. 1, 2020)fifty original works from the collections of the Berlin State Museums that were selected by Warburg himself for inclusion in his figurative atlas are on view.

From February 1927 Aby Warburg devoted himself to a challenging project that never saw an end: the Mnemosyne Figurative Atlas, now considered his most famous masterpiece. This was conceived in about two and a half years as the summa of his artistic activity. The project consisted of a series of plates made up of photographic montages assembling reproductions of different works from Middle Eastern and European antiquity and the Renaissance side by side with newspaper clippings and advertising labels from his contemporaries. Warburg, together with Gertrud Bing and Fritz Saxl, experimented using the form and function of the figurative atlas. They came up with a juxtaposition of images, which paginated and assembled according to different themes and cores, addressed art history, philosophy and anthropology in a highly original way. A seminal project for modern visual and media studies.

Berlin, for the first time reconstructed Mnemosyne, Warburg's figurative atlas

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.