Pain­ting as an event — Bern­hard Hei­sig on his 100th bir­th­day at the An­ger­mu­se­um Er­furt

Wi­th the ex­hi­bi­ti­on “Bern­hard Hei­sig. Pain­ting as an Event”, the An­ger­mu­se­um Er­furt is ho­no­u­ring the 100th bir­th­day of one of Leip­zi­g’s most in­flu­en­ti­al pain­ters of the post-war pe­ri­od. From 12 Oc­to­ber 2025 to 1 March 2026, around 75 pain­tings, in­clu­ding num­e­rous key works and ra­re­ly ex­hi­bi­ted pain­tings from pri­va­te coll­ec­tions, will be on dis­play. Hei­sig mo­der­nis­ed histo­ry pain­ting in an un­mist­aka­ble way: His fi­gu­ra­ti­ve com­po­si­ti­ons mer­ge per­so­nal war ex­pe­ri­en­ces wi­th coll­ec­ti­ve me­mo­ry and re­flect Ger­man past and pre­sent in an emo­tio­nal­ly char­ged pan­op­ti­con of me­mo­ries.

His ex­pres­si­ve, ani­ma­ted pain­ting style is in a li­ne of tra­di­ti­on wi­th Lo­vis Co­rinth, Os­kar Ko­kosch­ka and Max Beck­mann and makes vie­w­ing his works a vi­su­al ex­pe­ri­ence. In ad­di­ti­on to histo­ry pain­tings, the ex­hi­bi­ti­on al­so in­cludes still lifes, por­traits and land­scapes. The ex­hi­bi­ti­on marks the end of the cen­ten­ary ce­le­bra­ti­ons and is ac­com­pa­nied by a rich­ly il­lus­tra­ted pu­bli­ca­ti­on, which is available from the mu­se­um ti­cket of­fice.