Do we need modern art? As founding director of the Museum of 20th Century Vienna (1962), Werner Hofmann (b. 1928 in Vienna - d. 2013 in Hamburg) was often confronted with this question. He worked tirelessly to position modernism in Austria and promoted the internationalization of the young scene. Not only as an exhibition organizer, but also as an art historian and intellectual, he was a resistant thinker. With his bold theory that modern art should emerge from the spirit of the Middle Ages, Mannerism and caricature, he rewrote art history. Today he is regarded as the doyen of European intellectual history.

The exhibition Homage to Werner Hofmann (part 1). Biennale des Jeunes de Paris 1967 traces Hofmann's connections to the local art scene and reconstructs - after fifty years - the Paris show of young artists, in which Werner Hofmann chose an unusual combination: he showed works by the painter Adolf Frohner (1934-2007) with two interdisciplinary object and installation artists, Walter Pichler (1936-2012) and Richard Kriesche (born 1940). In addition to the loans from the Paris presentation, the exhibition conveys a comprehensive impression of the Paris show with documentary material and provides an insight into Werner Hofmann's thinking and impulse-giving figure with archive material from the artists' collection. The exhibition is the first in a series on Werner Hofmann.

Curators: Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Elisabeth Voggeneder