For those who wish to look at East Germany’s artistic geography through a wide window, the “East-German Artscapes” selection, established at DIE GALERIE in Frankfurt am Main on April 22, 2026, can be visited until September 9, 2026. Shaping itself along a line stretching from Brandenburg to Berlin, and from Leipzig to Dresden, this exhibition gathers urban production centers and the silence of the province, allegorical landscapes and concrete social memory, all under one roof.
Time and space intertwine in the exhibition, where we trace the bond that artists establish with the geography they inhabit through painting, photography, and sculpture. Evelyn Richter’s Neues Forum photograph or human portraits capturing social fractures in 1989 Leipzig directly reflect the mood of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Meanwhile, Lars Wiedemann, a younger-generation photographer in the lineup, documents the contemporary regional transformation processes of the very same geography.
Rich Stylistic Diversity and Artistic Dialects
On the painting side, a highly layered and rich stylistic diversity prevails. While the drawings on paper seen in Gerhard Altenbourg’s work Droben lacht das Tier unter dem Mond offer a poetic and grotesque world fed by literature, Ellen Fuhr’s Ostkreuz and Scheunenviertel canvases record the streets of Berlin like a personal diary. The mysterious Mannerism in Clemens Gröszer’s paintings Engel MMIX and Kerstin S. stands neighbor to Volker Stelzmann’s figurative language, crafted using old master techniques.
Doris Ziegler’s Stilleben mit Rehkopf—utilizing egg tempera—and her allegorical compositions with psychological depth are complemented by Hubertus Giebe’s expressionist historical inquiries in his painting Aufscheinende Zeit (blau) and Johannes Heisig’s investigations into social memory. While Frank Hoffmann blurs art history, turning it into an abstract fog curtain, Klaus Zylla displays a free style that bypasses traditional painting rules altogether. Rising in the middle of the space, Beate Debus’s oak and bronze sculptures titled Ausbrechen and Pietà transform the rigid mass of wood and metal into a dynamic body language.
Exhibition Note from NO-26 Editor
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Exhibition: East-German Artscapes
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Venue: DIE GALERIE (Grüneburgweg 123, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
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Dates: Running through September 9, 2026
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Artists: Gerhard Altenbourg, Beate Debus, Ellen Fuhr, Hubertus Giebe, Clemens Gröszer, Johannes Heisig, Frank Hoffmann, Evelyn Richter, Volker Stelzmann, Lars Wiedemann, Doris Ziegler, Klaus Zylla.
