“Without the inner experience no art can arise!” Ruth Baumgarte

RUTH BAUMGARTE
Werkverzeichnis / Catalogue Raisonné Vol. I-III

The artistic oeuvre of Ruth Baumgarte (1923–2013) is firmly rooted in the representational tradition. On the basis of the latest scientific research it is presented here with a complete catalogue raisonné in an opulent, three-volume edition.

Edited by Wiebke Steinmetz and Viola Weigel

Contributions by R. M. Fischer, R. Giesen, E. J. Gillen, H. Lethen, C. Präger, B. Reifenscheid, W. Steinmetz, A. Stief, V. Weigel

Text: English/German
3 volumes in a decorative slipcase
1172 pages, 3450 colour illustrations

HIRMER PREMIUM
27 × 32 cm, hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-7774-3838-2

175,00 £

https://www.hirmerverlag.de/uk/titel-3-3/ruth_baumgarte-2248/

To the online catalog raisonné

Popular actor Tobias Moretti will present the 8th Ruth Baumgarte Art Prize to Athi-Patra Ruga on December 7, 2022 - Following the opening of the Albertina exhibition "Ruth Baumgarte. Visions of Light and Color".

2022, the museum advisory board of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation will award the 8th Ruth Baumgarte Art Award to South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga (b. 1984 in Umtata, South Africa).

Athi-Patra Ruga works with performance, video, textiles and printmaking to explore notions of utopia and dystopia, materiality and memory culture. His opulent cross-stitch tapestries, sometimes enriched with objet trouvé, have particular radiance. Ruga's work relates the body to sensuality, culture, and ideology. Themes of identity, sexuality, memory, and power permeate his work.

His artistic approach to creating myths and alternative realities is an attempt to view the traumas of the last 200 years of colonial history from a place of distance, his imaginary world Azania - a term from the 1950s anti-apartheid movement "a post-apartheid, decolonial, and equal South Africa" where they exist outside of personal grief and subjective defenses.

The Albertina exhibition "Ruth Baumgarte. Africa: Visions of Light and Color" presents a contemporary reassessment on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the artist Ruth Baumgarte, who had a lifelong feminist orientation and created a unique Africa cycle.

With the German painter Ruth Baumgarte, the ALBERTINA Vienna presents an outstanding female artist of the 20th century. The focus of the show in the Pfeilerhalle is Baumgarte's extensive body of work, which is based on the artist's travels to African countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. The more than 40 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings unfold an almost magical quality when viewed.

From the 1950s until her old age, the artist traveled to Africa more than forty times, where she observed the people attentively and empathized with them. She was interested in the foreign cultures of a continent that at that time was still undiscovered by European artists. Central to the understanding of Ruth Baumgartes art is the relationship between man and nature, the fusion of figure and landscape.

Learn more about the exhibition

Lecture by Prof Dr Beate Reifenscheid, Director of the Ludwig Museum Koblenz

Thursday 07 April 2022, 6 p.m.

Museum for Art and Cultural History, Dortmund

As one of the few female artists of the 20th century, the painter, graphic artist and illustrator Ruth Baumgarte traveled the African continent over several decades. Beyond the mainstream and without official commissions, her interest between the 1980s and until the early 2000s was primarily focused on the people and the unique nature. In the process, she increasingly confronted apartheid and colonial relics, which shine through even in her intensely colored works. Ruth Baumgarte created a unique visual language that is multidimensional and symbolistically charged. The lecture traces essential stages of this pictorial cycle and situates the artistic work.

Admission free and without registration

Find out more about the exhibition

We are pleased to announce that the board of the art foundation has appointed the new director of the Kirchner Museum in Davos, Katharina Beisiegel, to the advisory board of the art foundation Ruth Baumgarte with immediate effect.

Katharina Beisiegel studied art and literature and was Deputy Director at the Art Center Basel, responsible for various international projects, including exhibitions on Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

The focus of her work is on the beginnings of modernity. Since 2018 she has also been working as a freelance curator, mainly publishing on Ernst Ludwig Kircher and curating exhibitions on his work.

She says of Ruth Baumgarte: “What interests me most is that this is a German women's and artist's life that we have not yet been able to show to a broader audience in this form, and thus a large one Closing the gap in the German art discourse. Ruth Baumgarte's work reflects not only her artistic feeling, but also the ups and downs of German history since the 1940s."

On the occasion of Ruth Baumgarte's 98th birthday, we are pleased to announce that the award of the 7th Ruth Baumgarte Art Prize this year will go to the internationally influential and world-renowned artist William Kentridge (born 1955); who lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. He follows the painter Michael Armitage (Nairobi / London). With EUR 20,000, the Ruth Baumgarte Art Prize is one of the most highly endowed honors for artists in Germany. The previous prizes went to Nan Goldin, Mona Hatoum, Amelie von Wulffen, Kader Attia and Judith Hopf.

“Social and political issues are also the big topic of contemporary visual arts. However, only a few artists manage to master them artistically and translate them into significant images and visual worlds of high impact. This includes William Kentridge, whose work has fascinated us since documenta 13. The “raging drawing” is the beginning and basis of his artistic method, which immediately reminded us of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, whose work we have been concerned with for a lifetime. The results are of the same intensity ”, justify the members of the jury Ingeborg Henze-Ketterer and Dr. Wolfgang Henze (Galerie Henze & Ketterer, Bern and estate management Ernst Ludwig Kirchner) the decision of the Foundation Advisory Board from their point of view.

William Kentridge is one of the most respected contemporary artists, working as a draftsman, creator of animated films, actor, director and set designer as well as a writer for film and stage. He studied at the Art Foundation in Johannesburg from 1976-78 and at the École Jacques Lecoq theater school in Paris in the 1980s. In his stop-motion animated films, which have been made since the 1980s, he reflects on the history and social circumstances of South Africa. His graphic stories combine his own autobiography with fictional characters. From the 1990s onwards, Kentridge devoted himself increasingly to theater and opera projects, for which he designed sets, costumes and animations and also directed. He has exhibited in the world's leading museums and is represented in important collections. An extensive retrospective is currently being presented in Hamburg's Deichtorhallen until August 1st.

The date for the ceremonial awarding of the art prize will be announced shortly.

We are pleased to announce that one of the new Bielefeld trams will bear the name of the artist Ruth Baumgarte. The "Ruth Baumgarte" train with the number 5020 is already used in passenger traffic. By the end of 2022, 21 ultra-modern Vamos light rail vehicles will be put into operation, and the jury of experts selected among other Lina and August Oetker, Hermann Delius and Friedrich von Bodelschwingh.

"As the artist and founder of the Samuelis Baumgarte Gallery, she made a lasting contribution to the Bielefeld art and culture scene. We would like to honor this by naming the Vamos Railway."

Cornelia Christian, moBiel, 2021

"In doing so, we want to bow to the achievements of the deserved and esteemed citizens on the one hand and to make a contribution to the city's culture of remembrance on the other."

Kai-Uwe Steinbrecher, moBiel, 2021

The Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation would like to thank moBiel for their commitment and their contribution to the culture of remembrance in the city of Bielefeld.

15 November 2020, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

Due to containment measures in respect of Covid-19 pandemic, museums are closed in Germany. We will inform you as soon as possible about the exhibition opening.

The retrospective exhibition Werde, die du bist! Ruth Baumgarte – Lebenskunst leads visitors through the life and work of the German artist Ruth Baumgarte in four thematic chapters featuring approximately 180 drawings, paintings and historical documents. She is presented as a representational artist and her relationship with the contemporary is emphasised, for example, when it comes to her self-identification and self-perception as an emancipated woman or when looking into the characteristics of her work.

This includes her early work dealing with the human-nature conflict, or her Africa cycle, which explored subjects such as (forced) migration and displacement long before an art-historical discourse on this topic was established in the Western world.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 264-page publication with an introduction by curator Dr Eckhart Gillen, published by Hirmer Publishers.

 Explore the exhibition online

Warm Invitation to attend the Unveiling of the Memorial Stele

Friday, 30th October 2020, at 2:30 pm

At the Entrance of the Rheinsteinpark

Access via Rheingoldstraße 32

10318 Berlin-Karlshorst

The artist Ruth Baumgarte (1923-2013) is honoured in Berlin-Karlshorst for her regime-critical, artistic processing of the racially, religiously, and politically motivated crimes during National Socialism with a memorial stele. The stele is being erected close to Rheingoldstraße 32, a place where Ruth Baumgarte, together with her mother, lived during her years of study at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) (1939-1945) up until the final battles of the Soviet troops entering Berlin-Karlshorst. Ruth Baumgarte, too, experienced the political and racial persecution and consequential repressive measures of the Nazi regime amongst her friends and family. This way, her awareness for Sinti and Roma families living in Berlin-Karlshorst was sharpened, and she began portraying families fleeing from the Genocide in her works, against all political directives.

In the presence of Michael Grunst, district mayor of Berlin-Karlshorst, and Alexander Baumgarte, Chairman of the Art Foundation Ruth Baumgarte, the official unveiling of the memorial stele took place during an event open to the public. Manfred Becker, member of the Memorial Stele Commission, and Dr. Catrin Gocksch, Head of the Section of Fine Arts and Culture uncovered the stele.