Gottorf Castle
In 1976 he won the Käthe Kollwitz Prize from the and state-level official recognition in the form of the Banner of Labor. The next year his work was the focus of an exhibition at the National Gallery in (East) Berlin, "Harald Metzkes – Two decades of Pictures". 1976 was also the year in which he was a recipient of the National Prize of East Germany for illustrations and graphic art. In 1984 and 1988 Metzkes participated in the Venice Biennale. Some years after the end of the German Democratic Republic, the Soviet sponsored one-party state of which he had been a citizen throughout its politically and socially troubled existence, Metzkes took part in the "Arts in the German Democratic Republic" exhibition staged in 1997/98 at the National Gallery. Another of the numerous exhibitions in which he was featured, in 2006, was "Bilanz des Malers" at Gottorf Castle in the extreme north of the country.