smow Blog Interview: Sabine Epple – Grassimesse should be a pulse monitor for new tendencies

Arising from the discussions and discourses of the earliest years of the 20th century on the production of, materials of, forms of, and relationships with our objects of daily use in context of the increasing industrialisation of the, then, Germany, and in context of the increasing globalisation of the, then, Europe, the Leipziger Grassimesse¹ quickly established itself amongst both avant-gardists and those of a more traditional persuasion, and in doing so became, arguably, one of the more important platforms for a continuation and development of those early 20th century discourses and discussions throughout the 1920s and 30s.

Then, as so oft in the (hi)story of Leipzig, came the NSDAP, then the War and then the DDR, and while events were staged that employed the name ‘Grassi’, the political context, and political interference, of both dictatorships, made and makes them difficult to class as Grassimessen in the sense of the pre-1940s events. And thus the Grassimesse was for a great many years a closed chapter in the (hi)story of creativity, industry and Leipzig before in 1997, the post-DDR Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst awoke the Grassimesse from its enforced, and involuntary, slumber.

Since 2000 the Grassimesse has been staged under the direction of Sabine Epple, Curator of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst’s Modern Collection, with whom we met up to discuss the Museum, the Messe, developments since 1997 and also the approaching 2023 edition of the Grassimesse…….