Revolutionary Romances
November 4, 2023 - June 2, 2024
Albertinum Dresden

This exhibition focuses on "revolutionary romances," the friendly revolutionary relationships that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had with countries of the Global South, and more specifically, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It thus takes a closer look at the little-studied subject of East German art in the context of global, transcultural art histories.

East German Art - Taking Stock & Perspectives
CONFERENCE
September 13-15, 2023
Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina & Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle

Initiated by the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung and in cooperation with the Moritzburg Art Museum Halle (Saale) and the Dresden Institute for Cultural Studies, this two-day conference will provide a public platform for experts--from academia, the art world, politics, and the media--to discuss the status of East German art today. After a review of the conflicts surrounding East German art in the wake of German unification—the "image battle," or Bilderstreit—this practice-oriented conference will seek to develop recommendations for concrete steps to take to increase the visibility of East German art in a pan-German context. (program)

Reconnect. Art & Conflict in Brotherland
May 18 - September 10, 2023

Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig

The MdbK is showing a three-part exhibition on the history of immigration in the GDR and its consequences. The first part will present works by artists from the so-called socialist brother countries. Due to the international cultural diplomacy of the time, many of them were able to study at art schools in Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin or Halle. Others fled their country of origin and found refuge in the GDR. This part of the exhibition is intended to broaden the spectrum of Leipzig art, to give new impulses with regard to a transnational history of art and culture, and to open the research perspective on art from East Germany in a constructive way. In total, the exhibition will display 80 paintings, works on paper and video works by César Olhagaray (*1951, Santiago de Chile, Chile), Getachew Yossef Hagoss (*1957, Dessie, Ethiopia), Michael Touma (*1956, Haifa, Israel), Mona Ragy Enayat (*1964, Cairo, Egypt), Rimer Cardillo (*1944, Montevideo, Uruguay), Solomon Wija (*1958, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Teresa Casanueva (*1963, Havana, Cuba) and Semir Alschausky (*1962, Leipzig, Germany).

Cornelia Schleime:
"I won't be stretched - I won't be braided"
March 4 - August 13, 2023
Städtische Galerie Dresden

Cornelie Schleime trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, but her rebellious attitude led to a ban on exhibiting her work just a couple years after graduating in the early 1980s. Unwilling to wait it out, she applied for an exit visa and spent the intervening time in Berlin, creating experimental art, including Super-8 films. When her visa was approved in 1984, she moved to West Germany,  entrusting her early work to a friend, Sascha Anderson; all of these works, her early paintings, were lost.

Cornelia Schleime's personal style cannot be squeezed into any ready-made categories, East or West. Paintings, drawings, photography, performance art, and poetry are the aesthetic means she uses to explore her identity. These intense and multi-layered works are full of creative originality. 

A one-room exhibition documenting Schleime's Super-8 films from 1982-84, titled Cornelia Schleime: "I'm not holding my Breath," can be seen in the SKD's Albertinum.

Doris Ziegler, Ich bin Du!
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle
February 26 - May 21, 2023

Doris Ziegler is one of the most important artists of the Leipzig School, yet she is far less known than many of her male counterparts. Employing a "cool" painting style inspired by the New Objectivity of the interwar period, Ziegler excels at painting cityscapes -- especially the industrial quarter of Leipzig known as Plagwitz -- and portraiture, with images of women being a particular highlight.