Beauty of Form

The Designer Christa Petroff-Bohne

Even thirty years after German reunification, there are still blind spots in our historiography of design developments in East and West. The exhibition "Beauty of Form" at the MK&G is dedicated to the work of Christa Petroff-Bohne, one of the most important German designers of the 1950s and 1960s. With her designs for industry, she brought contemporary design into the everyday culture of the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR). Petroff-Bohne was the mastermind behind the functionally elegant product aesthetic adopted by VEB (nationally owned company) Auer Besteck- und Silberwaren – maker of stainless steel products that were omnipresent in the GDR. As a professor at the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin, she was a formative personality and influenced generations of students. Her work is an important testimony to modern design activities in the GDR and is also relevant in international comparison. With some 300 exhibits, the presentation introduces Petroff-Bohne both as an industrial designer and as a teacher, and illustrates the situation of designers in the GDR.

The exhibition is a cooperation of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD) and the MK&G, curated by Klára Němečková (SKD), Silke Ihden-Rothkirch and Jörg Petruschat.