NEIN! Boris Lurie and NO!art

On the occasion of its reopening following the completion of accessibility improvements, the Kebbel Villa presents the exhibition NEIN! Boris Lurie and NO!art, in collaboration with the Boris Lurie Art Foundation.

Boris Lurie (1924 Leningrad, USSR–2008 New York, NY, US) was the youngest child of the Jewish businessman Ilja Lurie and his wife Schaina, a dentist. He grew up in Riga (Latvia). Following the German occupation in 1941, the family was interned in the Riga ghetto. Lurie’s mother, his grandmother, his younger sister, and his childhood sweetheart were murdered on December 8, 1941, during the Rumbula massacre, in which members of the SS killed approximately 250,00 Jews in a forest near Riga.

Boris Lurie and his father survived forced labor in the so-called Small Ghetto, as well as deportations to the Lenta labor camp and the concentration camps at Salaspils, Stutthof, and Buchenwald. In April 1945, father and son were liberated by U.S. soldiers at the Magdeburg-Polte subcamp.

In 1946, they both emigrated to New York City in the United States, where Lurie lived and worked until his death. He referred to himself as a “privileged” survivor and never regarded himself as a victim. Yet violence, abuse of power, and collective powerlessness remained central concerns of his artistic work throughout his life

Lurie took various painting and drawing classes at the Art Students League, yet his formal education ended at age 16. However, he developed an uncompromising visual language combining collage, painting, photography, and assemblage. Through the repeated juxtaposition of motifs of the Holocaust and the dark side of consumer culture, he created powerful works that are as political as they are socially provocative.

This exhibition at the Kebbel Villa brings together key works from various periods of his career, beginning with the early "War Series" from 1946. Particular emphasis is placed on works from the pivotal phase of the NO!art movement in the early 1960s. Selected works by Lurie’s NO!art co-founders Sam Goodman (1919 Toronto–1967 New York, NY, USA) and Stanley Fisher (1926–1980 New York, NY, US) complement the presentation.

Four undated works by Lurie, in which the German interjection “NEIN” plays a central role, are being shown to the public for the first time. One such work is displayed in each of the four exhibition rooms.

Lurie, who learned German at a young age and attended a German-language high school, considered German his "second mother tongue" – despite his traumatic experiences during the Nazi era.

He did not fundamentally reject Germany; in the 1970s, he even considered moving from New York to Berlin.

The resistance to the commercialization of art inherent in the concept of NO!art also shaped Lurie's attitude toward the art market. Consequently, he was reluctant to sell his work during his lifetime. During his life he worked as a fashion illustrator for several years, received a monthly pension as a Holocaust survivor, and later invested in penny stocks and real estate, which formed the basis of his estate.

Boris Lurie’s works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad, including at the Neues Museum in Nuremberg (2025, 2024, 2017), the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen (2022), the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York (2022), the Riga Bourse Art Museum (2020), the Jewish Museum Berlin (2016), and the Buchenwald Memorial (1998/99). His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Following his death, scholarly publications and exhibitions, as well as the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, have contributed significantly to the preservation and international visibility of his work.

A richly illustrated exhibition catalogue featuring texts by Rudij Bergmann, Jürgen Dehm, Georg Imdahl, and Dietmar Rübel in both German and English is forthcoming.

The exhibition is a collaboration with the Boris Lurie Art Foundation.