The walls of the Albertina speak of the colorful landscapes and heat of Africa. The German painter and enthusiastic traveler to Africa Ruth Baumgarte (1923 – 2013), to whom the Viennese institution is devoting a solo exhibition, is probably not known to many. They were discovered a few years ago in the German feuilleton, said Albertina general director Klaus Albrecht Schröder at a press conference.
Oil paintings, watercolors and graphics by the German artist are the focus of the exhibition “Africa: Visions of Light and Color” – so titled because it was trips to countries like Egypt, South Africa, Kenya or Tanzania that shaped Baumgarte’s late work. Her “Africa Cycle” exhibited here was created when she was already in her mid-seventies, said Schröder. From the 1950s until old age, Baumgarte traveled to Africa more than forty times – a continent that was unexplored for European artists at the time. While it is now gloomy and cold outside, “worlds of color” shine in the Albertina, curator Angela Stief wanted to attract those who appreciate the cold season less.
From sketches she made in Africa, Baumgarte created expressionist-style, opulently colorful paintings in Germany, whose red and yellow tones tell of warmth and glaring sunlight. Nature and animals, but above all women in the country, she chose as subjects. A group of women, one of them with an emphatically self-confident look, merges in color with the abstract landscape in “African Vision”, “Return” shows a woman in bright orange clothes flanked by a bird of prey, wearing fabric on her head. An early self-portrait of the artist – here she used pastel shades – hangs like a signature next to the entrance to the pillared hall.
With the Baumgarte show, the Albertina sheds light on the exotic representations of Africa by a white European woman who died in 2013 – and thus also evokes the discourse on how and by whom foreign cultures should be represented. Cultures cannot exist in isolation from each other, said Stief, different things would mix here. Just as colorful as Baumgarte’s paintings are the impressive tapestries by the South African Athi-Patra Ruga – a black man, half human, half fish is enthroned there – and represent a connection to contemporary art. Today, Wednesday, he is to be awarded the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation prize be awarded.
(SERVICE – “Ruth Baumgarte. Africa: Visions of Light and Color” from December 8 to March 5, 2023 in the Albertina, open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., www.albertina.at )