The end of the avant-gardists in the seventies was followed by the rediscovery of figurative painting in the eighties. The unbridled momentum and explosive power of the new was immense: in the early 1980s, the young artists, who came from very different directions, painted their pictures free of art-historical styles, isms, and groups. The combination of the transgression of aesthetic boundaries, nihilism, provocation, humor, and irony spawned a generation of painters that within several few years was received not only in Germany but internationally. The publication draws a complex and differentiated picture of the dynamics that seized the painting of those years. It highlights different perspectives and movements that began at the time in Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne, distinguishes them from one another, and relates them to each other.Exhibition schedule: Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, July 22–October 18, 2015