Evelyn Kuwertz

Evelyn Kuwertz (* 1945 in Bad Aussee , Austria ) is a German painter. She lives in Berlin and has also had a presence in south-west France since 2000. Since the mid-1970s there has been regular exhibition activity at home and abroad, and her works are in public and private collections in Germany and France.

Life

From 1969 to 1974 she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and was Hermann Bachmann's master class student in 1975 and 1976 .

Evelyn Kuwertz was involved in Berlin in the 1970s and 80s for the equal appreciation and perception of women artists in the art scene. She was one of the initiators and organizers of the two female artist exhibitions, Künstlerinnen International 1877–1977 (1977) and Das Verborgene Museum (1986/87), which took place in Berlin. The feminist exhibition project On the Situation of Women in Family and Society was created in collaboration with Brigitte Mauch and Toja Wernery during her studies at the University of Fine Arts . The exhibition planned as a scenic environment was to be shown publicly in Berlin in 1973, which was prevented by the Berlin Senator for Education Gerd Löffler due to "moral concerns".

Oeuvre

Early work

Kuwertz's artistic work is shaped by the artist's socio-critical perspective. Since the mid-1970s she has been creating social portraits that reflect the volatility and anonymity of the city of Berlin, for example in the views of Berlin's S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations ( Bahnhof Gleisdreieck , 1979, and S-Bahnhof Westkreuz , 1981), in where the forlornness of human individuals can be seen in the public urban space. Kuwertz interprets these concrete places atmospherically and condenses them into metaphors of social conditions. Her works on Berlin S-Bahn stations, which were neglected until the political change , become a symbol of resignation .

Further developments of the 1980s

In the mid-1980s, her artistic perception of images changed. The works, which until then had been characterized by a realistic style of painting, whose image structure seemed closed, open up and are set in motion by the light dynamics that have come into the picture. Urban landscapes such as Hallesches Tor underground station (1986) bear witness to the painterly expansion of the spatial spectrum of this work phase .

Another point of reference for further artistic development is the human figure, whose spontaneous movement increasingly arouses Kuwertz's interest. In collaboration with Lotte Grohe , the series Slow motions (1986–1988) was created, consisting of large-format drawings in which Kuwertz spontaneously put the improvised movements of the dancer on paper. Furthermore, the natural force of the water and its never-ending movement becomes an important issue. In her large-format drawing Helgoland (1985–1987), Kuwertz captures her impressions of a stay on the island of Helgoland :

“For me, this concrete place got the symbolic value of a reality to be understood more broadly: the contrast of the flowing movements of the sea to the statics of the built stones, that of nature to construction, of soft to hard. The right-angled, the marking of the blocks following a numerical principle of order in relation to the unformed water, its diversity, the changeability of the forms in the repetitive rhythmic movements. But these changes are also what help the forms find their rest, actually remain unchanged while the stones change, weather, sand up. In them there is only the dimension of 'time', which refers to the island, its past and to the people. "

- Evelyn Kuwertz

With the spatial opening and dynamization of her pictures in the 1980s, Kuwertz artistically anticipated the social change that only took place in the political field with the fall of the iron curtain in 1989. The formerly hermetic rooms of the city of Berlin, which were still permeated by the ideology of the Cold War - very vividly in the bunker pictures (1983–1984) - give way to spatial relationships in which the later change can already be felt.

Turning times, the 1990s

After the political change, Kuwertz made the urban changes in the reunified, new capital Berlin the core theme of her painting. Here, too, it is the balancing between the fixed, static form and its change through the element of movement that it takes up. Starting with small-format paintings of the empty Potsdamer Platz , she summarizes the resulting large-scale construction site into a large-format panorama (1992–1995) and comments on the permanent construction site in the historic city center of Berlin with numerous paintings characterized by expressive colors. In her work Hotel Adlon (1997) she depicts the relocation and reconstruction of entire facade sections in the center of Berlin, as well as in Esplanade (1995) and in Berlin Mitte (1998). She then turns to the ruins on the historical Museum Island , for example in Reconstruction of the Neues Museum (2001), which she brings back to life through painting.

Expansion of the spatial spectrum

After 2003, Kuwertz started looking at other European metropolises and larger cities in addition to Berlin. She creates paintings on Paris (2004), Barcelona (2005 and 2009) and Rome (2012) as well as Toulouse (2003), in which she explores the spatial characteristics of the respective places, in some cases in unusual image formats and through spatial montage in the painting itself tries. In addition, dealing with the element of human movement in space remains a determining theme and flows into her series of works Mouvement . In it Kuwertz puts the focus on the physical expression of people. She captures the artificial canon of dancers' movements in order to relate them to the increasingly permeable spatial structures. The dance movement corresponds with the transparent overlays of indoor and outdoor spaces, painting and drawing find a synthesis and are condensed in life-size formats on paper and canvas into sculptural-looking montages. At the same time, there is collaboration with dancers from the Berlin State Ballet and the Ballet du Opéra Toulouse . Spontaneously and out of an inner attitude, watercolors and drawings from the Répétition series (2006–2009) arise , in which Kuwertz records her reflections on the effects of the movements of modern dance.

literature

• R. Gerhardt, E. Kuwertz, S. Schumann: Representing female content in a female way. Women-specific issues in art using the example of six women artists . In: Magazine Art . tape 15 , no. 4 , 1975, p. 76-86 .
• E. Kuwertz, U. Stelzl: The aesthetic part within the publications of the new women's movement . In: Aesthetics and Communication . tape 25 , no. 7 , 1976, p. 114-119 .
• Evelyn Kuwertz. Realism studio 11 . New Society for Fine Arts, Berlin 1980.
• L. Bevilacqua, I. Dalinghaus: I followed people with my eyes. Exhibition Evelyn Kuwertz . In: Courage . tape 5 , No. 8, 1980, pp. 39-41 .
• Evelyn Kuwertz. Pictures and drawings . Fröhlich & Kaufmann, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88725-174-1 .
• Evelyn Kuwertz. Drawings . Berlin 1990.
• Evelyn Kuwertz. Pictures Berlin. Excerpt from the work 1973–91 . Frauen Museum - Women form their city eV -, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-928239-19-8 .
• Evelyn Kuwertz. Movement on Potsdamer Platz . Wilmersdorf Art Office, Berlin 1993.
• Evelyn Kuwertz. City and movement . District Office Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin 2008.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Monika Kaiser: New appointments in the art space. Feminist art exhibitions and their spaces, 1972–1987. Bielefeld 2013, p. 49 ff.
2. ^ Evelyn Kuwertz: Pictures Berlin excerpt from the work 1973-91. Frauen Museum Bonn 1991, no p.

Web links

• Web presence of Evelyn Kuwertz
• Evelyn Kuwertz on ArtFacts.net