Updated

Updated · The Guardian · Sep 3

Maurizio Cattelan Opens First Major Germany Solo Show, Bringing $17.2 Million Hitler Work to Berlin

Updated

Updated · The Guardian · Sep 3

Maurizio Cattelan Opens First Major Germany Solo Show, Bringing $17.2 Million Hitler Work to Berlin

Q: Why did the world's most notorious art prankster hide his most famous viral works from his biggest German exhibition?

He left out the banana and the gold toilet because he wanted Berlin’s biggest show to shift attention from the viral joke to what he says has always been the real subject of his art: history, power, fear, memory and moral unease. Cattelan said those headline-grabbing pieces belonged to “a different conversation.” In his view, works such as *Comedian* and *America* became so famous that many people stopped at the prank or meme. For *Night*, he wanted viewers to take the work “seriously,” even if humor and irony remain his entry points. Curator Lisa Botti described that method as “comic existentialism” — art that makes people laugh, then unsettles them. The Berlin setting also shaped that decision. Cattelan has said the city still bears the scars and contradictions of history, making it the right place for works like *Him*, the kneeling Hitler figure, *Purgatory*, the miniature Brandenburg Gate, and *La Nona Ora*, the fallen pope. He argued these images carry broader meanings about evil, authority and collective memory, but gain particular force in Germany. The architecture of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie mattered too. Cattelan said the building pushed him toward a more site-specific, spatially organized exhibition built around central axes and the tension between inside and outside. In that context, the viral crowd-pleasers risked overwhelming the quieter, darker argument of the show. In short, he hid the hits to make the exhibition more precise than loud.

3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 3

Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie has opened Cattelan’s “Night,” his first major solo exhibition in Germany, after the Italian artist won this year’s museum prize for influential contemporary artists.
The show mixes new commissions with works from the past three decades while largely skipping his best-known pieces, instead centering power, memory and history through Berlin-specific installations such as a reduced Brandenburg Gate.
Key works include 2001’s “Him” — the kneeling Hitler sculpture that sold for $17.2 million in 2016 — alongside “La Nona Ora,” which shows Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite, and thousands of stuffed pigeons overhead.
Cattelan said Berlin’s scars and contradictions give the exhibition unusual force, arguing the Hitler figure stands for evil more broadly rather than only German history.
Known for the $6.2 million duct-taped banana and the stolen 18-carat gold toilet, Cattelan framed “Night” as another darkly comic meditation on collapsing social structures, disinformation and the appeal of strong leaders.