23 November 2026
6.30 p.m.
Fasanenstrasse 25, 10719 Berlin

Admission is free – unfortunately, we cannot guarantee a seat..

Painting, often regarded as the oldest of art forms, has been repeatedly declared “dead.” In this original and compelling study, technical art historian Pia Gottschaller thoroughly dismantles that notion, revealing how painters radically reimagined the medium in the years following World War II. No longer confined to the paintbrush, artists began to experiment with new methods, employing found, fabricated, and repurposed objects – as varied as an Afro comb, the human body, and a robotic airbrush – to create paintings unlike any seen before, revolutionizing the course of art history. Gottschaller is closely following this trend worldwide, from Jackson Pollock and the Gutai Art Association in Japan to the present day. The focus of the study are thirty-eight contemporary painters, including Amoako Boafo, Helen Frankenthaler, Yves Klein, Julie Mehretu, Beatriz Milhazes, Howardena Pindell, Kazuo Shiraga, and Andy Warhol. Unruly Tools is the first study of this kind and offers essential testimony to painting's continued vitality and reinvention.

Dr Pia Gottschaller is Reader in Technical Art History at Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Her transdisciplinary and transnational research focuses on modern and contemporary art, and has been supported by, amongst other things, research grants from the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, a Caroline Villers Research Fellowship at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and a Getty Foundation Guest Scholarship. Her publications include monographs on Palermo and Lucio Fontana, as well as anthologies and essays on materiality in global artistic practice, including Conceptual art, Minimalism, and Latin American Concrete and Neo-Concrete art.