Image: Museum Frieder Burda, New York
Museum Frieder Burda is devoting its current exhibition to one of the most sustained figurative painting movements of the postwar era. ‘Wettstreit mit der Wirklichkeit. 60 Jahre Fotorealismus’ is on view in Baden-Baden through 2 August 2026, bringing together more than 90 works by over 30 artists from six decades of photorealism, also described by the museum as hyperrealism.
The show traces a style that emerged in the United States in the mid-1960s and took the photographic image as its starting point, reproducing it with painterly means in an illusionistic way. In the museum’s framing, photorealism developed as a response to Abstract Expressionism and set itself the challenge of rivaling photography in precision and visual impact. Everyday American motifs became recurring subjects, but the works’ appeal lay less in subject matter than in the strikingly convincing way they were painted.
The exhibition draws on the Frieder Burda Collection and is supplemented by loans from around 20 international collections. Among the lenders named by the museum are the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. The presentation is intended to show how the movement’s claim to realism was redefined through technical exactitude, from early figures such as Robert Bechtle, Richard Estes, Ralph Goings and Audrey Flack to international developments of the present.
The museum’s website lists artists represented in the exhibition as including John Baeder, Robert Bechtle, Charles Bell, Roberto Bernardi, Tom Blackwell, Robert Cottingham, Don Eddy, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ben Johnson, Ralph Goings, Richard McLean, Malcolm Morley, Ron Kleemann, Karin Kneffel, Gerhard Richter, Raphaella Spence and Craig Wylie. Individual works shown on the exhibition page include Robert Cottingham’s ‘Radios’ from 1977, Richard Estes’s ‘Nedick’s’ from 1970, Don Eddy’s ‘Private Parking III’ from 1971, Ralph Goings’s ‘Richmond Diner’ from 1983, Richard McLean’s ‘Jack Magill’s Bourbon Jet’ from 1981, Roberto Bernardi’s ‘L’ottimista’ from 2021 and Craig Wylie’s ‘L (Saturated)’ from 2009.
Museum Frieder Burda’s July newsletter positioned the exhibition as a summer visit, noting that the museum’s climate-controlled galleries offer a chance to see the show before it closes. The newsletter also said public guided tours are offered on Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., and on Fridays at 3 p.m. The museum’s current programme page separately lists free 30-minute tours for the annual Museumsfest on 19 July, alongside workshops for children and young people and other activities.
‘Wettstreit mit der Wirklichkeit. 60 Jahre Fotorealismus’ runs from 28 February to 2 August 2026 at Museum Frieder Burda, Lichtentaler Allee 8b, Baden-Baden. The museum says it is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and that the exhibition is supported by loans from international collections alongside the museum’s own holdings.
