Bernhard Heisig: Die Wut der Bilder (Gniew obrazów)
17.02.06 - 02.04.06
The National Museum in Wrocław
pl. Powstancow Warszawy 5
tel. 071/ 372-51-50
The exhibition opening Friday 17.02.06 -18:00
Since 1990, iconographic controversy over the evaluation of GDR art has centred on the personality and work of the painter Bernhard Heisig, born in Breslau in 1925. At that time, the prevalent resentment towards “state artists” hampered our view of an ouvre that had already broken with the doctrine of Socialist Realism in the GDR during the 1960s - through images of doubt and despair in face of the physical and mental destruction that war had left behind in Germany. All his life, Bernhard Heisig has struggled to come to terms with the traumas of a biography that passed from war and dictatorship to a further dictatorship and the Cold War.
Showing more than 42 paintings and 20 litographies, this exhibition gives a comprehensive survey of the painter’s work.
Bernhard Heisig has never permitted himself to be distracted from his search for the subjective truth of war. 60 years after the capitulation of Germany, therefore, it is logical to see him as the German painter, who - like no other - made the madness of the past war into his theme.
