“Illustrating between the lines” – celebrating graphic artist Hans Hillmann on his 100th birthday. Studio exhibition at the documenta archiv

To mark the 100th birthday of Hans Hillmann (1925–2014) on October 25, 2025, the documenta archive is presenting a studio exhibition that pays tribute to the multifaceted work of this internationally renowned graphic designer, illustrator, and university lecturer. Hillmann shaped the visual culture of the Federal Republic of Germany for decades with his significant film posters, innovative book illustrations, and groundbreaking graphic novel Fliegenpapier (Flypaper).

The exhibition features original posters, drawings, book illustrations, and unpublished material from the estate, which was donated to the documenta archive in 2015 by his widow, Rosa Marlies Hillmann. Visitors can discover the artist’s versatility—from his early film posters to free drawings with surreal motifs.

Hillmann became famous in the 1950s for his posters for Neue Filmkunst Walter Kirchner and Atlas Film. He designed more than 150 posters for films by well-known directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel, and Akira Kurosawa. His works are still considered milestones in poster art today.

As a professor at the Kassel School of Fine Arts (1961–1989), he influenced generations of young designers and was one of the co-founders of the “Kassel School.” In 1964, he collaborated on documenta 3 and was himself represented with eleven posters in the “Industrial Design/Graphics” section of the Staatliche Werkkunstschule Kassel, which showcased examples of international commercial design—including designs by artists such as El Lissitzky, A. M. Cassandre, and Jan Tschichold.

In addition to his professorship and work as a poster designer, Hillmann worked as an illustrator in his adopted home of Frankfurt am Main. He regularly contributed to renowned magazines such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin and Twen. In the 1970s, he gradually turned away from poster design.

With Fliegenpapier (1982), his adaptation of a short story by Dashiell Hammett, he created a key work of European author comics. The work is considered the first German graphic novel in the modern sense – a literarily ambitious, artistically designed pictorial narrative. His free drawings, flip pictures, metamorphoses, and human-animal stories reveal the artist as an attentive observer of the absurd and the poetic.

The studio exhibition displays film posters, sketches, book illustrations, and previously unpublished materials from Hans Hillmann’s estate. It offers a rediscovery of an artist whose graphic thinking is still relevant today—between image and text, film and graphics, narrative and abstraction.

Exhibition and concept: Sabrina Funkner

Visiting hours:
During the opening hours of the documenta archive

Untere Karlsstraße 4, 34117 Kassel
Tue–Fri: 9 a.m.–4 p.m.
and on demand :archiv@documenta.de

Public tours:

December 8, 2025, and January 26, 2026, at 11 a.m. each day.

Presse:archivkommunikation@documenta.de