In the past, painting from Leipzig has been largely viewed as male and figural. This multigenerational exhibition demonstrates that this is no longer solely the case. Its focus is not only placed on women artists with works by Katrin Brause a.k.a. Heichel, Henriette Grahnert, Franziska Holstein, Rosa Loy, Claudia Rößger, Julia Schmidt, Kristina Schuldt and Miriam Vlaming but it also does away with another commonly held belief. The exhibition features both the typical sort of figural painting for which Leipzig is known as well as the development of abstraction from figurality. Each of the artists confronts the themes of painting, figuration and abstraction in her own powerful manner and unique visual vocabulary. Individual works thus emerge from the seen, the photographed, the remembered, the dreamt or the invented – pictures created with the means of painting that in turn call the medium itself into question. The exhibition’s spectrum hence ranges from Rosa Loy’s figurative Leipzig-style works to the abstract manifestations in the works of Franziska Holstein.

Although not all of the German artists whose works are represented in this show at the Museum Franz Gertsch still live and work in Leipzig, they and their works are all linked by the formative time they spent as students at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Rosa Loy (b.1958 in Zwickau/D) studied in Leipzig with Felix Müller and was a master student of Rolf Münzner. Miriam Vlaming (born 1971 in Düsseldorf/D) studied in Leipzig as a master student of Arno Rink. Katrin Brause a.k.a. Heichel (born 1972 in Leipzig) and Franziska Holstein (born 1978 in Leipzig) likewise studied with Arno Rink and were master students of Neo Rauch. Julia Schmidt (born 1976 in Wolfen/D) initially studied in Leipzig and then at the Glasgow School of Art (GB). Henriette Grahnert (born 1977 in Dresden/D) studied in Leipzig with Arno Rink and at the Glasgow School of Art. Claudia Rößger (born 1977 in Mittweida/D) first studied at the University of Art and Design Burg Giebichenstein Halle/Saale, later in Leipzig with Arno Rink, also as master student. Kristina Schuldt (born 1982 in Moscow/RUS) studied in Leipzig with Annette Schröter, Sighard Gille and Neo Rauch, whose master student she was. Julia Schmidt and Miriam Vlaming now live and work in Berlin, all the other artists live and work in Leipzig.

The exhibition extends across the basement level of the museum’s original building and was curated by Anna Wesle in collaboration with the artists. The exhibition catalogue will be published by modo Verlag, Freiburg i. Br. (D).