An ambivalent work between recognition and exclusion

In South Africa, her work is part of the country's national heritage, in Germany she fell into oblivion after the 1920s: the South African artist Irma Stern (1894-1966), daughter of German emigrants, spent her youth alternating between South Africa and Germany before finally settling in Cape Town in 1920. By this time, she had made a name for herself as a painter through successful exhibitions, including in France and the Netherlands. She exhibited in South Africa for the first time in 1922 and her work was perceived as shocking and was ridiculed. Her unconventional paintings, especially her depiction of black people far removed from clichés, met with incomprehension and were described as »insults to human intelligence«, for example. However, it is precisely this type of depiction that is the reason for her reverence in South Africa today, where general recognition of her work began in the 1940s. The Irma Stern Museum, which opened in 1972, is one of the most popular art museums in the country. From July 13, the Brücke-Museum in Berlin will be showing Stern's first solo exhibition in the city where she spent the formative years of her youth and attended Albert Reimann's private art school from 1912. Irma Stern. A Modern Artist between Berlin and Cape Town runs until November 2 and presents over 40 paintings, watercolors and drawings, most of which come from South African collections.

The works of Irma Stern are juxtaposed with critical commentaries from a queer Black perspective by South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga (*1984). Stern's work is ambivalent: as a white painter, she benefited from the country's racist social structures and colonialism. She was able to present herself as an »expert« on Black cultures. At the same time, her artistic work, supported by extensive travels through many African countries, contributed to the visibility of endangered Black cultures and to their preservation. As a Jew, she experienced marginalization and anti-Semitism in Germany, but also in South Africa. »The rediscovery of this artist is a continuation of the critical contextualization of Expressionism at Brücke-Museum«, explains Lisa Marei Schmidt, director of the museum and curator of the exhibition.

The first retrospective in Germany was organized by the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in 1996. This was the first time Stern's works had been shown publicly in this country since 1933.