Jörg Immendorff, "Café Deutschland"

Immendorff (1945–2007) created this cycle of paintings between 1977 and 1984, and they quickly became the German artist's best-known works. Stylistically evoking such pre-World War I figures as Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Pechstein, as well as the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) group, each composition depicts a tavern, club or bistro, crowded with individuals meant to represent Germany's Cold War present and Nazi-haunted past. The series is a landmark of German postwar art.