VIENNA.- It is with works by the German painter Ruth Baumgarte (1923–2013) that the
Albertina Museum sets out to present an outstanding artist of the 20th century shown in Austria for the first time. At the center of this presentation in the Columned Hall is Baumgarte’s wide- ranging body of works born of her travels to African countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. These altogether approximately70 oil paintings, watercolors, and graphic works manifest a near-magical quality when viewed in person. Zimbabwean poet Chirikure Chirikure said of the artist: “She viewed the countries of Africa and their peoples not as models to be immortalized on canvas but as an integral part of her journey through life.”
Beginning in the 1950s and until well into her old age, the artist made over 40 trips to Africa, whose people she attentively observed and empathetically appreciated. She took an interest in the unfamiliar cultures of a continent that had yet to be discovered by European artists at that time. Central to any understanding of Ruth Baumgarte’s art is the relationship between human beings and nature, the melding of figure and landscape. On the basis of quick sketches made onsite, she would later on—upon having returned home to her studio in Germany—create vividly colorful paintings, virtuoso watercolors, and expressive gouaches and drawings.
Baumgartes' work was most recently shown at the Museum of Art and Cultural History in Dortmund, the Ludwig Museum in the Marble Palace, the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg and the Ludwig Museum Koblenz. The artist is being shown in Austria for the first time.
A great colourist of our time
"Dynamic streams of colour cover the paintings like a glowing lava. Alongside the radiant bright areas, which virtually dazzle the eye, there are deeply luminous colour sections of no less intensity, which have the same saturation as the intense red, yellow and orange.
Through her numerous journeys to Africa, Ruth Baumgarte encountered those intense colour impressions that she could not encounter in her German homeland. Formally and colouristically, Africa with its bright light and high colour intensity was for her what Tunis was for Paul Klee and August Macke half a century earlier: the liberation of her painting from the Central European tradition," says ALBERTINA General Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder.
"Ruth Baumgarte made her Africa paintings at a time when questions of artistic appropriation and cultural dispossession in the sense of current discourses did not yet exist. Nevertheless, she intuitively recognises that political asymmetries, which manifest themselves as a culture clash, cannot be resolved in superficial harmony, but must be mastered creatively, as it were, as a problem of form in tension-laden colour compositions. The result is an exciting cosmos that, starting with flaming red tones and rich orange-ochre, flows into the depths via yellow, pink and violet to decided violet-blue tones", says curator and ALBERTINA MODERN Director Angela Stief.
At the center of the exhibition Visions of Light and Color is the Africa cycle created by Ruth Baumgarte (1923–2013). This monumental late work comprises around 70 pictures with a truly liberating, expressive force of color. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing into old age, the artist traveled more than forty times to the African continent, to Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, usually spending several months there. Baumgarte was interested in the foreign cultures of a world then largely unknown to European artists.
On the basis of quick sketches executed on site, she later created in her studio in Germany color-intensive paintings, virtuoso watercolors, expressive gouaches, and drawings.
Ruth Baumgarte produced her paintings of Africa at a time when questions of artistic appropriation and cultural dispossession were not yet up for debate as they are today in an age of postcolonial discourse. Nevertheless, she intuitively recognized that political, social, and cultural asymmetries, which manifest themselves as a culture clash, cannot be resolved in superficial harmony, but must be addressed creatively as the formal-aesthetic sediment of real contrasts in electric, colorful compositions. She thus created a coloristic cosmos, in which flaming red, rich orange-ocher, yellow, pink and purple, and resolute violet-blue tones surge from the depths. Emotion is heightened to the extreme in Baumgarte’s works through coloration.
The very special light that suffuses the African landscapes finds painterly expression in this way, while the dissolution of forms and allegorization of motifs speak of the artist’s unease in experiencing a continent poised between emergence and continuing inequality and exploitation
VISIONS OF COLOR
In her expressive and explosive late work, Ruth Baumgarte brought the blazing light of Africa to Europe. Understanding light as color and color as light becomes an artistic experience, a dramatic force in her works. Lava flows of colors and an almost intoxicating rhythmically fluid movement surge through the pictorial structures.
With the remarkable intensity of her paintings, Baumgarte joins the genealogy of the great colorists of the twentieth century. Her travels through numerous African countries served as the motor for her ability to release those color impressions that she could not find under the overcast skies of her German homeland. Baumgarte’s art cannot be simply reduced to genre painting nor to any narrative or descriptive art: The experience of African light left a similarly incisive impression on her as the sun of Provence did on Vincent van Gogh, and as, overall, did the light of southern France on the Fauves around 1905.
ATHI-PATRA RUGA
This exhibition of works by Ruth Baumgarte includes two large•format tapestries and a drawing by Athi•Patra Ruga. The portraits by the South African artist do not depict real persons, but rather they are hybrid figures who often circumvent fixed attributions of ethnicity, class, and gender.
AthiPatra Ruga is this year’s winner of the Ruth Baumgarte Foundation Prize, following artists including William Kentridge, Michael Armitage, Nan Goldin, and Mona Hatoum. Ruga was born in Umtata (South Africa) in 1984 and lives in Johannesburg and Cape Town. His multimedia work, which encompasses glass pictures and performances in addition to tapestries and drawings, pursues an opulent, dazzling, and colorful aesthetic. In it he blends a variety of cultural influences by means of the appropriation of Western contexts and art styles such as Expressionism.
In his investigation of post•colonial history and the anti•apartheid movement of the 1950s, Ruga strives to observe the traumas of the past from a position of distance. He imagines a South Africa of equality, without racism, existing beyond personal grief and subjective defensiveness.
THE STREAM OF TIME
In this triptych, consisting of the paintings Even the Elephant’s Death Will Occur on a Single Day, Turn of the Fire, and The Stream of Time, vultures circle in front of a toxic yellow landscape in the left picture, while eagles perch on rock formations in the right painting and
women gather and carry brushwood in the center. All the scenes take place against a
dramatically colored sky and can be read as a reference to South Africa’s bloody history.
Traditionally, women are considered the linchpin of life and survival on the African continent. The two symbolically charged wing panels with vultures and eagles embody the two antipodes of life and death, as well as the pair of opposites of mortality and immortality.
Pervasive threats and the impression of an imminent danger for the women is evident. The suspicious sideways glance of the main figure emphasizes the unsettling pictorial atmosphere.
African Beat I & II
Baumgarte was concerned even in her late works with the artistic potential of setting figures in motion by means of dynamic pictorial compositions. Dance and ecstasy are at the center of the large-format works African Beat I and II. Moving bodies coalesce into an energetic collage of ara- besques. The rhythm of the pictures is marked by a vibrating chiaroscuro contrast and the integration of different tech- niques, such as gouache, pastel, charcoal, and pencil.
Burning Sky
Burning Sky belongs to the later oil paintings in Baumgarte’s Africa series, when she increasingly depicted people fleeing in inferno-like landscapes. In these works she structures the tension-laden space in several levels, weaving the figures into the natural surroundings. The sky burns like fire and bathes the surroundings in a glowing apocalyptic red. The central figure resembles a modern interpretation of the Titan Atlas from ancient mythology, who appears to support the heavens on his shoulders.
Anatomical Landscape II
The almost abstract painting Anatomical Landscape is dominated by a virtually unrecognizable figure seen from behind. The body of the protagonist melts completely into the landscape. Baumgarte modulated her pictures almost sculpturally, rather like the works of Paul Cezanne, who constructed his paintings by positioning patches of color next to each other
Catalogue raisonné in three volumes
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.
In the essay volume a portrait of the life of the artist is sketched out to reflect the biographical and cultural-historical milestones of her life; the position of Baumgarte’s oeuvre in art history is examined; and the artist’s particular relationship to Africa is explained. The volume is complemented by a detailed illustrated biography. The second volume lists and illustrates all Baumgarte’s artistic works. Her illustrations are published in their entirety for the first time in the third volume, thereby opening up an exciting chapter in illustration in postwar art.
