The 100th birthday of the Leipzig painter and graphic artist Bernhard Heisig (1925-2011) is an occasion for the MdbK to honour his work in an exhibition. Birthday still life with Icarus offers a representative insight into Heisig's pictorial world, the diversity of his themes and forms of expression from his early work to his late creative phase. It also reveals his significance for the development of visual art in the GDR between 1949 and 1989. Photographs by Reiner Heim (1940-2017), Helfried Strauß (*1943) and Bernd Wittwer (1940-2011) show Heisig in his studio, but also in his function as rector and professor at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB).

Bernhard Heisig came to Leipzig from his native city of Breslau (Wrocław) in 1948, where he lived and worked for the next 44 years. A year later, he began his studies at the State Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Trade (now the HGB), where he taught himself from 1954. In 1961, Heisig was appointed rector and professor at the academy and subsequently established an important painting class. After an intermittent break, he returned to the HGB in 1976 and again served as its rector until 1987. When he died in 2011, Bernhard Heisig left behind not only a multifaceted, enormously influential oeuvre, but also a large number of students.

In addition to the well-known history paintings the exhibition also includes lesser-known, autobiographically connoted portraits, landscapes and still lifes from the MdbK's collection. There are also prints, including several sheets from the famous cycle The fascist nightmare (1965/66). The presentation is rounded off by photographs - including some by Helfried Strauß (*1943 Plauen), himself a professor at the HGB for many years - which show Heisig in his studio and at the university. Taken together, the show offers a subjective insight into the artist's visual world, but one that is certainly representative in terms of the variety of themes and forms of expression on display