Of war, everyday life and other miseries
Hand drawings by Bernhard Heisig
13/07/—31/08/25
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Bernhard Heisig (born 1925 in Breslau / now Poland, died 2011 in Strodehne / Brandenburg / Germany), the BLMK is devoting its attention to a previously little-noticed aspect of his oeuvre: the cabinet exhibition focuses not on painting, but on hand drawings, which place a thematic focus on Heisig’s engagement with war and historical memories. Influenced by his own experience as a Wehrmacht soldier in World War II, his artistic exploration of the subject of war in its social and political dimensions permeates his oeuvre. The spectrum is broad both in content and form.
Heisig repeatedly draws on art-historical references to critical visual worlds of classical modernism, such as those of Max Beckmann, and focuses on susceptibility to mass media, but also on the historical conditions and consequences of war, such as physical and psychological disability. On display are extraordinary, never-before-exhibited drawings, which often combine reflections on a literary fiction of war, such as in Ludwig Renn’s novel „Krieg,“ with the search for images of reality.
The drawings, which come from a private collection, are almost all undated and untitled. However, in many cases, temporal and thematic connections to paintings on canvas or monumental wall works can be discerned. Although these drawings can also be considered independent works, the wealth of variation in Bernhard Heisig’s oeuvre becomes apparent. Not only the stylistic differences and the compositionally diverse pictorial concepts are clearly evident. Also striking are the differences in the pictorial versions, which can be identified in the formulation of details. Not only in paintings, but also in drawings, there are often multiple sheets of the same subject, albeit with slight variations. Furthermore, the exhibition also includes surprising, almost caricature-like drawings by the artist. The artist humorously narrates his own everyday life through sequential picture stories: Bernhard hangs a Picasso painting at home.
The exhibits are organized neither chronologically according to the dates of their creation nor according to the chronological sequence of historical events to which the image content refers. Rather, the presentation is structured by loose motif or theme groups.
The exhibition of hand drawings is complemented by a series of photographic portraits of the artist, taken by Ludwig Rauch. Created in the artist’s studio in Strohdehne, these portraits show Bernhard Heisig in 1992 in front of the back of a stretched canvas from the estate of Max Beckmann. Heisig had received seven such canvases as a gift from the Beckmann family shortly before creating the photographs. On these and four other canvases, Heisig painted his eleven-part picture cycle „Zeit zu leben.“