Between toothpaste ads and furniture stores: The QUIBB Manifesto and Capitalist Realism

April 7, 2026

“Do you love art? If so, what color?” – rarely does an art movement begin with a question that is so difficult to answer and therefore says so much.

When Winfried Gaul and Hans Peter Alvermann published the so-called QUIBB manifesto in January 1963, much of it seemed like nonsense. A questionnaire full of absurd options, inspired by a toothpaste advertisement, and laced with Dadaist humor. And yet, this document was more than just a game: it marked a moment of change.

As curator Dr. Sarah Hülsewig writes in the exhibition catalog, this new generation of artists represents "a counter-movement"—after abstract art had "pushed its possibilities to such an extreme" that it had reached its limit. What follows is not a return to the old ways, but a shift in perspective.

For the abstraction that characterized postwar Germany is now increasingly interpreted as a form of obfuscation. As silence about the recent past, about guilt, about continuities. The QUIBB manifesto does not directly name this unease – but amidst seemingly absurd questions, those suddenly emerge that strike at the core: about belonging, about responsibility, about repression.

The fact that the manifesto is dated January 30, 1963 – exactly thirty years after the National Socialists seized power – is no coincidence. It is a date that cannot be interpreted neutrally.

At the same time, the gaze is directed not only inward but also outward. Pop Art has long since become an international phenomenon. In the USA, it celebrates consumerism, surface, and recognizability: advertising, stars, and serialized images. But in Germany, this visual language encounters a different reality. The optimism of the "American Way of Life" cannot simply be adopted here. Or, as the manifesto states: "Our art is not a trip to Disneyland."

Instead, a variant of Pop Art emerges that remains closer to everyday life – while simultaneously questioning it. Symbols of petit-bourgeois narrow-mindedness suddenly become as much a part of the visual repertoire as the inconspicuous objects of daily life.

In the same year, 1963, this idea was put into practice in Düsseldorf. Four young artists – Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter – organized an exhibition in a vacant shop. Not a museum, not a gallery, but an improvised space that first had to be prepared.

They call their project "Capitalist Realism." A term that immediately causes confusion. It sounds familiar and yet contradictory, reminiscent of the Socialist Realism of the GDR and contrasting it with a West German variant – ironic, detached, deliberately ambiguous.

The invitation to the exhibition doesn't offer a clear stylistic description, but rather a range of possibilities: Pop Art? Naturalism? Anti-art? Neo-Dada? The terms are presented side by side without any definition. It's less a definition than a refusal.

What the QUIBB manifesto formulates as text becomes practice here. Art is not created in a closed space, but in direct relation to reality. Magazines, advertisements, everyday images become starting points. The boundary between art and the world of experience begins to blur.

A year later, Richter and Lueg took this idea further – and integrated art entirely into everyday life. In 1964, they staged the event "Living with Pop – A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism" at the Berges furniture store. Their paintings hung among sofas, lamps, and living room furniture. They themselves sat and lay on the furniture as if they were part of it.

It's a staged performance that simultaneously creates intimacy and distance. Art appears accessible – yet reveals the extent to which West German society is in a state of settling in. Prosperity, retreat into the private sphere, a present that makes itself comfortable.

Hülsewig describes this situation in the catalogue as a life in which the outside world penetrates the "living room" "only via the [...] barely noticed 'Tagesschau' news program." The pictures stand in the middle of the room – and yet show how little is actually seen.

German Pop Art, therefore, does not begin with a clear style, but with an attitude of uncertainty. It adopts the visual world of Pop Art, but not its tone. Perhaps its beginning is best described as follows: not as an import, but as a translation. A translation that creates friction – between consumption and critique, between surface and experience, between what is visible and what lies beneath.

Joelle Czampiel

General