Suite Bogota Berlin

HOTEL BOGOTÁ IN BERLIN OR THE SUITE BOGOTÁ – BERLIN BY THE ARTIST MATILDE MARÍN

is an edition of 3 copies and 2 AP numbered and signed

The edition consists of a text and 15 analog photographs made in 2010 during the stay of the artist in that city

The font chosen for the texts was Gill Sans, created in 1930 by the typographer Eric Gil

The cotton paper used for the edition is Edition Etching Rag
And the boxes were made by the firm Conservarte

The graphic design was done by Vanesa Trosch and
the English translation was made by Laeticia Mello

Printing was completed in Estudio Matilde Marín
the night of August 4, 2017 with full moon

Hotel Bogota, located in West Berlin at seven kilometers from the center of the divided city, was during the 20th century a historical symbol that many guests and inhabitants of Berlin could not forget.

In its early years was a huge house of exquisite eclectic architecture, built in Berlin in 1911. And before serving as headquarters of the hotel, it had already been the epicenter of the best and worst moments of the history of the 20th century.

At the beginning it was an apartment building inhabited by illustrious figures, the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung gives details of the grandiose celebrations that the impresario and art collector Oskar Skaller offered in this house during the 1920s. Dances enlivened by the clarinetist Benny Goodman, those who attended such personalities as the impressionist painter Max Liebermann.

In 1934 the fifth floor became the residence and workshop of the Jewish photographer Else Ernestine Neuländer – known as Yva – photographer of fashion, nudes and surrealistic images.

In the wild Berlin of the 30’s Yva left her studio-house to Helmut Neustädter who later changed his surname to Newton and became one of the most recognized fashion photographers of the 20th century; many of his photographic projects for Vogue in London were inspired by Yva’s studio-house.

At the same time this place was also frequented by an ex-student of the Bauhaus. Yva would leave her the studio so that she could invite friends, dance jazz and drink while taking pictures of each other. Later, during World War II, Yva was taken and assassinated in a concentration camp.

With the immense, exquisite and historic house without owners, the Nazi command was installed in it and was occupied by Hans Hinkel, director of the Ministry of Culture of the Third Reich.

After the end of World War II, the British allies turned the house into the “denazification” office of Germanic citizens and later as a favorite site of British intellectual meetings during the beginning of the Cold War.

Finally, destiny had reserved a last letter to this beautiful and busy building, a last lap that would give the possibility of being admired and enjoyed fully again. After his exile in Latin America, Heinz Rewald returned to Germany in 1964. He rented the building, turned it into a hotel and called it “Bogotá” in tribute to the Latin American city that had received him so lovingly and saved from the Nazi Holocaust.

As a hotel it stood out again and had an intense life, in the 60’s was constituted in a place to “arrive” in West Berlin. The music and the arts began to be present, alternating with guests who stayed to live that “different” environment. Many rock stars asked to stay in it, giving concerts in the room where the former Bauhaus student danced and took pictures with her friends in the distant 30’s.

In the year 2010, I stayed in this eccentric and unusual Hotel on the occasion of the exhibition “Reality and Utopia”, Argentina’s Artistic Road to the Present, which took place at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, organized by the Argentine curator Diana Wescheler. A group of artists were invited to the assembly of our works and to the colloquium that was developed in those days in the Akademie. I arrived there on a rather cold night of an early autumn and spent several days in it. As I entered, I was surprised by the feeling that I could find Marlene Dietrich or Iggy Pop in an armchair in the living room. I imagined Marlene Dietrich smoking in the worn-out armchairs and dropping the ash in the edges of the old ashtrays. The telephone booths of the 30’s were very well preserved and the rooms very austere with a very discreet comfort. I was amazed by the art facilities in the inner courtyards and the beautiful exhibition of photographs by the German artist Manfred-Michael Sackmannen in the main room. All the photos that compose this suite were taken during those days, I did not meditate to make any art project during my stay but to enjoy photographing that strange and intense place, yet its memory remains in me and finally I present this Suite that brings to the present that trip to Berlin.

During the year 2013, hundreds of Berlin artists, journalists, writers, photographers and architects undertook a strong initiative of publications and signature collection in defense of the entire preservation of the mansion, but after 49 consecutive years of operation, Hotel Bogotá closed its gates and was demolished; the beautiful and symbolic building remains in the present.

Matilde Marín
Buenos Aires, 2017