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Overture
Graduate Show of the Städelschule 2025

16 July 2025–10 Aug 2025

The Städel Museum once again presents the graduate show of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule. Under the title “Overture”, works in various media and disciplines—including installation, sculpture, painting, film, and performance—are on view by a total of 30 graduates.

Your Visit

Programme
for this exhibition

About the Exhibition

The exhibition offers insights into the recent developments in contemporary art and reflects a broad spectrum of artistic practices and discourses. The artists are Mariia Andreeva, Charlotte Berg, Linus Berg, Sam Cottington, Arnaud Ferron, Samuel Georgy, Tomás Loureiro Gonçalo, Anima Goyal, Giulia Guidi, Aerin Hong, Gašper Kunšič, Gregor Lau, raúl itamar lima, Salome Lübke, Fuki Matsumoto, Rosa Nitzsche, Vincenzo Ottino, Deshaun Price, Emmilou Roessling, Killa Schuetze, Juri Simoncini & Elisa Diaferia, Elsa Stanyer, Nicholas Stewens, Mahmoud Tarek, Siyu Tian, Vera Varlamova, Xtina Vargas, Punch Viratmalee and Ming Yuan.

The works offer diverse insights into contemporary artistic discourses. At the same time, they engage with timeless themes rooted in the artists’ personal realities and contemporary experience: the politics and aesthetics of everyday life; the relentless circulation of images; the fluidity of identity; affects such as desire, vulnerability, and longing; the inscriptions of history and time; the limits of language and communication; the artificiality of our relationship with nature; and the conditions of production—including in relation to one’s own artistic position. As varied as these themes are, so too are the artistic practices: film, video, and sound-based works encounter installation, sculpture, painting, and collage, as well as conceptual and performative interventions.

Curator
Johanna Laub, Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule

Project Managers
Katja Hilbig and Ela Dutta, Städel Museum

With this exhibition, the museum once again becomes a resonant space for current artistic positions and questions. We are delighted to offer the young artists a platform on which to share their diverse perspectives with a wide audience—in a place where the history of art enters into a productive dialogue with its present and future.

Philipp Demandt, Director, Städel Museum

Städelschule

View of the Städelschule, photo: Jörg Hempel

The Städelschule is considered one of the most internationally renowned institutions for Fine Arts and stands for an interdisciplinary education that combines practice and research. Over the course of several years, students learn and work within a class system that emphasizes individual development and independent studio practice. The graduate show marks both a formal and artistic highlight of the program at the Städelschule. The graduates studied in the classes of Monika Baer, Gerard Byrne, Judith Hopf, Hassan Khan, Tobias Rehberger, Willem de Rooij, and Haegue Yang.

In a year marked by paradigmatic shifts, the diversity of positions presented side by side in this exhibition holds particular significance for us. Amid the tensions of our time, the students’ works open up new spaces and invite us to enter them—an overture to what is yet to come.

Barbara Clausen, Rector, Städelschule

Tuesday Special

Take advantage of our Tuesday Special and visit the permanent exhibition and all special exhibitions for the single price of €9.

Every Tuesday from 3 to 6 pm.

Sponsors & Patrons

“Overture” is made possible by the generous support of Städelschule by the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP and the Ernst Max von Grunelius-Stiftung. The Städelschule thanks the Städelschule Portikus e.V., the Stiftung Städelschule für junge Künstler, the Sammlung Pohl gGmbH, Plastische Chirurgie Frankfurt | Hochtaunus and the Heinz und Gisela Friederichs Stiftung for the donation of graduate prizes and stipends.

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