Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, revolutionised the concept of humankind at the beginning of the last century. His exploration of the "unconscious" became the driving force of the European avant-garde of his time and he shaped the culture of the 20th century like no other. At the beginning of the last century, his idea that human feeling, thinking and acting is strongly influenced by the unconscious co-founded the European-wide Surrealist artists' movement. Among the Expressionists, his study of the soul triggered a search for the self.

Inspired by Freud, artists of Informel and Abstract Expressionism in Europe and America also tried to materialise the creative forces of the unconscious in painting in the immediate post-war period. The exhibition, developed in cooperation with the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna, traces the reception of Freudian theories in 20th century art up to the present day: From creative processes at the beginning of the last century that seek to materialise inner worlds, to the existentialist approaches of the post-war period, to the conceptual art of the 1980s and to feminist positions of postmodernism that sometimes critically reflect the legacy of the master thinker of psychoanalysis in the language of art. mehr