Mapplethorpe’s career flourished in the 1980s, as he continued to refine his techniques and formats. As his renown grew, his studio attracted figures from New York’s cultural elite, including David Hockney, Iggy Pop and Grace Jones, whose likenesses he captured in photographic portraits. Six of the photographs on which he collaborated with Lisa Lyon were published in Artforum in 1980, followed by an exhibition of these works in 1983 at Leo Castelli, New York. In 1988, the year before his death, his work was shown in four major institutional exhibitions, organised by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and National Portrait Gallery, London.

Joseph Beuys participated in documenta in Kassel five times between 1964 and 1982, as well as representing Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1976 and again in 1980. A major retrospective of his work opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1979 and he was made a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, the following year. The artist increased his commitment to political and ecological activism during this period, and founded the German Green Party in 1980. He was awarded the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize in Duisburg shortly before his death in 1986 and his acceptance speech included a concise summation of his view of Social Sculpture: ‘Everything is sculpture!’

It was in the context of the monochrome Übermalungen that Rainer, in the mid-fifties, began to use the shape of the cross. The theme of the cross came to an end with the Übermalungen, until it reappeared around 1980 in connection with the ‘chaotic’ finger paintings. The vertical-horizontal structure of the cross, he said, was like monochrome painting, a way to arrive at the motionless picture [because] the cross subdues the visual domination of a single direction. — Rudi Fuchs, 1989Rainer’s international reputation flourished during this decade, with important solo exhibitions at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1981); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1984); Abbazia di San Gregorio, Venice (1986); a Self Portraits show that travelled the United States (1986); and a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1989). His work was also included in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985 and Avant-Garde in the Eighties at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1986–1987), as well as entering the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum.

The first finger paintings originated in 1973. Rainer has told how he was working frenziedly on a large Face Farce when his brush broke. Because he did not want to lose his concentration, he carried on with his fingers. He liked the feel of paint on his fingers. He understood that painting with hand and fingers ... provided a directness and swiftness of touch that could be another kind of translation of an emotional state of mind into an image. — Rudi Fuchs, 1989

First exhibited at documenta 7, Emerging ’82 - 1 and Emerging ’82 - 3 (both 1982) are characteristic of Emilio Vedova’s paintings from this decade, widely recognised as the acme of his career. In 1980, the artist had travelled to Mexico, where the colours and immense landscapes made a lasting impression on him. ‘...Mexico. All at once the kaleidoscope of emotions, of wide American spaces, of scents and colours was right back,’ he wrote to Rudi Fuchs in 1982. ‘The clashes were immediately very harsh. A new geography of immense “horizontal” spaces. My feeling is that of being an ant.’ Upon his return, Vedova introduced an explosion of colour into his palette, refining the abstract painterly style that had defined his practice throughout his career.

Vedova talks about his painting with broad gestures that reflect the movement of the brush across the canvas ... a man of natural talent, in profound and intimate contact with his work and his material. Vedova paints his canvases with the same simple and astonishing naturalness with which a peasant ploughs the earth. This freedom to be himself, this freshness, are qualities that no one will ever be able to take away from him. — Rudi Fuchs, 1982

Vedova was the Italian representative at the first documenta in Kassel in 1955, and his work was exhibited there again in 1959, 1964 and 1982. His inclusion in documenta 7 demonstrated his significance for the up-and-coming generation of neo-expressive artists. That same year, his work was shown at the 40th Venice Biennale and in a solo exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, also curated by Rudi Fuchs. This preceded a number of publications and solo exhibitions as the decade progressed, including a retrospective curated by Germano Celant at the Museo Correr, Venice, and a show at the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich.