
The non-commercial exhibition for the 100th birthday in the Samuelis Baumgarte Gallery, curated by the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation, presents over 70 outstanding works from six decades that show highlights of the life's work of the painter and illustrator Ruth Baumgarte from June 21 to August 26, 2023. Typical of her representational working method is how the artist, from a humanistic stance, links precarious social issues with the suggestive radiance of color. Detailed wall texts in the exhibition rooms introduce the complex history of her work, while documentary films about the life and work of Ruth Baumgarte can be seen in the basement.
Ruth Baumgarte, born in Coburg in 1923, grew up in the metropolis of Berlin from 1925. The atmosphere and the people in Berlin of the "Golden Twenties" will shape her for life. Coming from an old family of actors and having been in contact with theater and film from childhood, the arts were close to her heart. In the early 1940s, she began her studies in graphic arts and drawing at the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin. During this time, she became a passionate draftswoman, closely observing her surroundings with a sharp pen and pencil. At the same time, she became acquainted with the watercolor technique and discovered the expressiveness of color as the driving energy of her creative work, which would lead her to new interpretations in her late work beginning in the 1980s.
Ruth Baumgarte's work is focused on reality. But she turns in her paintings to the inner experienced in ever new formulations. In this point she follows the German Romanticism, as a viewer to look at a world and thereby watch the longings and hopes of the ideal fail.
Africa, the enigmatic continent with its power, but also its great social and political changes, becomes the impulse of her brilliant color-saturated late work, which ushers in the international reception of her work.
2023 | Ruth Baumgarte on the occasion of her 100th birthday
Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld (engl. Subtitles)
To mark her 100th birthday, ARTE documentary filmmaker Sabine Carbon and co-producer Felix Oehler made a film about the life of Ruth Baumgarte.
2023 | Live-Stream - Ceremony for the 100th Birthday of Ruth Baumgarte
Altstädter Nicolai Church, Bielefeld
Recording - The ceremony in the Bielefeld Altstädter Nicolai Church in the stream
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Ruth Baumgarte (1923-2013), a ceremony took place on June 20, 2023 in the Bielefeld Altstädter Nicolai Church. More than 400 invited guests from culture, society and business experienced a varied and atmospheric event that inspired. The reading performance by Anna Maria Mühe and Tobias Moretti, internationally known from film, television and theater, was one of the highlights
Program of the ceremonial act
After a devotion by Pastor Ulrich Pohl, Bethel Foundation, Angela Stief, Director of the Albertina Modern, Vienna, and Dr. Renée Gadsden, Vienna/New York, gave laudatory speeches on Ruth Baumgarte and her work. In addition, greetings were given by Dr. Catrin Gocksch, Cultural District Councillor, Berlin and by Dr. Katharina Beisiegel, Director of the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Museum, Davos. The moderator and author Tim Berendonk led through the ceremony. Another highlight was the artistic dialogue on Ruth Baumgarte between the distinguished actors Anna Maria Mühe, who received the Bavarian Film Award on June 16, 2023, and Tobias Moretti, winner of the German Film Award, among others.