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.

The opening of the exhibition and the reopening of the Kebbel Villa will take place on Sunday, April 26, 2026, at 11 a.m.

Speakers:

• Andreas Feller, Lord Mayor of the City of Schwandorf
• Jürgen Dehm, Director of the Kebbel Villa
• Stephanie Stebich, Executive Director of the Boris Lurie Art Foundation

Following the opening: Concert-Lecture featuring works by composers including Erwin Schulhoff, Kurt Weill, Ernest Bloch, and John Williams, alongside Yiddish folk songs. 

Boris Lurie (1924 Leningrad, Soviet Union – 2008 New York, USA) grew up in Riga, Latvia. He survived the Riga ghetto and the concentration camps at Stutthof and Buchenwald. His mother, grandmother, younger sister, and childhood love were murdered during the Rumbula massacre in 1941. In 1946, Lurie emigrated to the United States with his father, settling in New York, where he lived and worked as an artist until his death in 2008. Although he described himself as a 'privileged' survivor and never regarded himself as a victim, his artistic work was shaped by his engagement with violence, abuse of power and collective helplessness.

As a largely self-taught artist, Lurie developed an uncompromising visual language combining collage, painting, photography and assemblage. By repeatedly juxtaposing Holocaust imagery with the darker facets of consumer culture, he created works of striking political and social provocation.

In 1959, he co-founded, together with Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher, the NO!art movement – a radical force opposing Pop Art, the commercialized avant-garde, and the consumerist fixation of American capitalism. NO!art defined itself as a radical avant-garde anti-art movement, with exhibition titles such as Doom, Involvement and Vulgar, their exhibitions addressed topics including imperialism, racism, sexism, consumerism, war, genocide and nuclear threat. They believed that art should not only have an aesthetic effect but also be understood as an act of social intervention.

The exhibition at the Kebbel Villa presents key works from various phases of Lurie’s artistic career, beginning with his early War Series from 1946 onward. A group of Lurie’s works in which the German word “NEIN” occupies a central role is being presented to the public for the first time. The presentation is complemented by selected works by his NO!art colleagues Goodman and Fisher.

Lurie's works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad, including at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York (2022), the Riga Bourse Art Museum (2020), the Jewish Museum Berlin (2016), and Galerie Agnès B., Paris (2003). Following his death, research and exhibition grants, as well as the work of the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, have contributed to the preservation and international recognition of his work.

An exhibition catalogue featuring texts by Rudij Bergmann, Jürgen Dehm, Georg Imdahl, and Dietmar Rübel, in both German and English, is currently in preparation and will be presented at the closing event on June 7, 2026.