This catalogue documents Hanne Darboven’s complex and radical paperwork Ein Jahrhundert: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gewidmet, 1971–1982.

Produced on the occasion of Hanne Darboven’s exhibition in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1982.

From 1990 to 1996, Hanne Darboven worked on Kinder dieser Welt, an extensive opus comprised of several books, toys, brown-paper tablets and 2202 musical “scores”. In a departure from previous practice, the artist employs coloration and a playful approach to modify the stringency of her concept involving the subjective rendering of calendar information to conjure up a cosmopolitan children’s world as a symbol for an optimistic new beginning.

This book reproduces the formally quite diverse and complex segments of the work in sections. An introductory essay explores the way in which the artist fundamentally recapitulates her entire concept of space and time in Kinder dieser Welt, shaping it into an appeal for the discovery of individual rules. An annotated works catalogue and a detailed biography document the life and work of the artist, the recipient of the 1995 International Prize of the state of Baden-Württemberg.

To coincide with the 350th birthday of the philosopher, mathematician, lawyer and political writer Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (born 1646 in Leipzig), Hanne Darboven’s Evolution Leibniz was publicly exhibited for the first time in the Sprengel Museum Hannover. This complex work is divided into three extensive topics: Encyclopedia, image documentation and daily bills. Hanne Darboven combines Leibniz’s biography with her and our immediate present.

Artists on Hanne Darboven is the first instalment in a series culled from Dia Art Foundation’s ‘Artists on Artists’ lectures, focused on German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven. Established in 2001, the lecture series highlights the work of modern and contemporary artists from the perspective of their colleagues and peers. The inaugural ‘Artists on Artists’ title is published in conjunction with the opening of Darboven’s 1980–83 installation “Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983” (“Cultural History 1880–1983”) at Dia:Chelsea in New York City.