Dreaming: Annemirl Bauer and Bärbel Bohley

Annemirl Bauer (1939–1989) became a vocal critic of the GDR’s dogmatic art system early on. Her paintings combine colourful, figurative realism with an expressive immediacy. As a single mother, she lived in precarity. Her political activities included calling for an end to the GDR’s travel restrictions and resulted in her surveillance by the state security service (Stasi) as well as a professional ban from the GDR’s Association of Visual Artists (VBK), which was lifted two years later after fellow artists advocated for her membership to be reinstated. In the spring of 1983, Bauer wrote numerous letters trying to prevent Bärbel Bohley from being removed from as head of the VBK’s painting and graphic design section. Her portraits of Bohley also attest to the support these women gave each other.

Bärbel Bohley (1945–2010) was dedicated to different political movements including Frauen für den Frieden (Women for Peace), and was therefore subject to state retaliations that heavily impacted her artistic work from the early 1980s onwards. Her drawings, prints and paintings focus on individuals, personal experiences and autonomy. This attention to personal realities also shaped her actions with regards to East German society. The rising tensions in the GDR’s political situation in 1989 led Bohley to shift her focus from art to politics. As a cofounder of the New Forum, she became one of the Peaceful Revolution’s leading figures.

The exhibition Dreaming: Annemirl Bauer and Bärbel Bohley draws on Galerie im Turm’s historic location to reassess and honour these artists and their respective oeuvres.

The exhibition also features photographs by Christian Borchert (1942–2000) and Jürgen Graetz (b. 1943) that show Annemirl Bauer’s personal and artistic life. Bärbel Bohley can be seen in Barbara Klemm’s (b. 1939) iconic photograph from the mass-demonstration at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz on 4 November 1989. Bohley spoke at this protest, which was the largest demonstration in East Germany’s history not initiated and controlled by the state. In the photo, she is standing between politician Gregor Gysi and author Heiner Müller, both prominent figures in East Germany’s cultural and political context. In Bohley’s print Manchmal ist Kunst abwesend! (Sometimes, art is absent!), part of the print portfolio titled Silberblick 3 (Silver Gaze 3, 1989), the absence of art amid political upheaval becomes a statement in itself. Elske Rosenfeld (b. 1974) took up Bohley’s gesture in 2023 and transposed her text-print onto two images, a positive and a negative. By reinterpreting artist and activist Bärbel Bohley’s message, she re-illuminates the ambivalence of her words.