Kirunatopia ::
Gerda Lepke
Gerda >Lepke: LANDSCHAFT BRAUNKOHLEN-TAGEBAU HAGENWERDER, 1980–1981, Oil on canvas, Courtesy Kunstfonds des Freistaates Sachsen / Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Exhibition view: David BrandtWork
In the 1970s and 80s, Gerda Lepke worked as a commissioned artist in open-cast mines. In the worker’s portraits and landscape studies she made there, the abstraction of the machine-made landscape is impressively combined with her characteristic style formulating a distinct break with the conventions of worker’s portraits. With individually placed brushstrokes, she develops a reference system of abstract signs from which figurative motifs emerge.
Gerda Lepke applies paint with a brush attached to a very long rod. The commissioned work for Hagenwerder was originally conceived as a triptych. For the Kirunatopia exhibition, two picture panels of the triptych, which today are included as individual works in two different collections of the Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen with different collection histories (Kunstfonds des Freistaates Sachsen/Galerie Neue Meister), were brought together for the first time again. The third picture panels is today considered lost.
Bio
Gerda Lepke was born in Jena in 1939. She was trained to become a nurse and came to Dresden in 1960, where she first studied art in the evening classes of the HfBK in 1962 and then painting from 1966 to 1971. She is a cofounder of the Dresdener Sezession 89.
Websites
Kunstfonds des Freistaates Sachsen / Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
