Arnold Bode on the occasion of his 125th birthday

“I had to make something of Kassel so as not to go under.”
Arnold Bode, 1955

Today, Arnold Bode would have turned 125. We celebrate the artist, exhibition organizer, designer, urban planner, inventor, and university professor who transformed his birthplace and hometown of Kassel—also in order not to “go under” himself—into a laboratory for contemporary art with global impact. To this day, Bode’s documenta stands for the close interweaving of art and urban society.