Aby Warburg, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, panel 39 (recovered, detail), Photo: Wootton / fluid; Courtesy The Warburg Institute

Video: Caro & Kaspar

Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, Exhibition view, © Silke Briel / HKW
Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, Exhibition view, © Silke Briel / HKW
Aby Warburg, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, panel C (recovered, detail), Photo: Wootton / fluid; Courtesy The Warburg Institute
Aby Warburg, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, panels 6 & 77 (recovered), Photo: Wootton / fluid; Courtesy The Warburg Institute
Aby Warburg with Gertrud Bing and Franz Alber in front of Warburg’s panel design, Rome, Palace Hotel, May 1929

Sep 4–Nov 30, 2020

Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne

The Original

Exhibition, conference, publication

Sep 4–Nov 1, 2020

In the 1920s, the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg (1866-1929) created his Bilderatlas Mnemosyne tracing recurring visual themes and patterns across time, from antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond to contemporary culture. His approach provides inspiration for today’s visually and digitally dominated world. At HKW all 63 panels of the Atlas will be recovered for the first time from Warburg’s original images.

Now, a 3D tour makes it possible to also view the exhibition remotely as well as the Gemäldegalerie exhibition Between Cosmos and Pathos that shows artworks ranging from prehistory and early history through to the modern age that Warburg used as the basis for his encyclopaedic image collection. More about the exhibition…

On the occasion of the exhibition Hatje Cantz publishes two publications: A folio volume gathers the 63 plates of Warburg’s Atlas – newly photographed from the original, multi-colored images and the 20 panels from the previous versions in black and white along with essays by Axel Heil, Roberto Ohrt, Bernd Scherer, Bill Sherman and Claudia Wedepohl. Another volume with extensive commentaries by the curators will be published in Spring 2021.

The exhibition is curated by Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil in cooperation with the Warburg Institute.

Part of The New Alphabet