In contrast to the compact catalog of the first documenta, three volumes were published for documenta 2, covering the genres of painting, sculpture and prints. The latter was now an integral part of the exhibition with its own section in the Palais Bellevue, having been largely excluded in 1955. The design of the book covers and the exhibition poster by the Arnold Bode studio followed the modernist triad of red, blue and yellow.
As the theoretical pacemaker of the first documenta exhibitions, Werner Haftmann is the author of the central catalog contribution for the second time. His introduction "Painting after 1945" contains the paradigmatic phrase: "Art has become abstract." The talk of the ideal of freedom and modern art as a "model case of human culture" reflects not least the global political developments of the time: the formation of the bloc and the systemic competition between East and West.