The catalogue of the exhibition “A CITY BECOMES COLOURFUL. Hamburg Graffifiti History 1980 – 1999”, which will run from 2 November 2022 until 31 July 2023 at the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, tells the story of the origins of this youth subculture in Hamburg. The curators Oliver Nebel, Frank Petering, Mirko Reisser and Andreas Timm have assembled almost 500 exhibits, including photographs, texts, sketchbooks, spray cans, news papers, magazines, vinyl records and accessories.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Hamburg’s urban landscape gradually began to change. The instigators of this transformation were not urban planners, however, but graffiti artists: inspired by films like Wild Style and Beat Street, they moved around the city at night with spray cans and left behind colourful pictures, symbols and writing on walls, bridges and train carriages. Over the course of time, Hamburg – which had been a grey city dominated by postwar architecture – was transformed into a colourful and diverse metropolis which soon became one of the European epicentres of the graffiti and hip-hop scene, alongside Paris, Amsterdam and Munich.
The exhibition “A CITY BECOMES COLOURFUL. Hamburg Graffiti History 1980-1999”, which will run from 2 November 2022 until 31 July 2023 at the Hamburg Museum, tells the story of the origins of this youth subculture in Hamburg. The curators Oliver Nebel, Frank Petering, Mirko Reisser and Andreas Timm have assembled almost 500 exhibits, including photographs, texts, sketchbooks, spray cans, newspapers, magazines, vinyl records and accessories. In their research, they were able to build on their previous collaborative work: they are the editors of the lavishly illustrated book A City Becomes Colourful (published in 2021), from which the exhibition gets its name.
Prof. Bettina Probst
Street-Art Absolute Beginner 1990er-Jahre Daim Urban-Art HipHop Rap David Fascher Beginner Breakdance 1980er-Jahre Fettes Brot Vinyl Jugend Graffity