Art Exhibition of the GDR, Dresden, 1946–88

With ten editions from 1946 and 1988, the Art Exhibition of the GDR was a recurring event that showcased the country’s creative production, including ‘applied fields’ like design. In this respect, these exhibitions were also a mirror of East Germany’s latest design developments, to be seen and discussed by a broad audience. Prominently displayed on the poster for the Sixth German Art Exhibition (1967) by Klaus Wittkugel (1910–85) is a model of a machine tool, here a redesign by product designer Eberhard Kull (b. 1938) for the StSF 160 vertical punching machine from Uhren- und Maschinenfabrik Ruhla.
This underlined the new mission for designers in the 1960s, namely the creative treatment of ‘Produktionskultur’, or production-site design. The following years saw the field of workplace design become established in East Germany, with the University for Industrial Design at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle launching a dedicated department in 1975.