The retrospective ACHIM FREYER BILDER at Berlin's Schloss Biesdorf is the first to present Achim Freyer's visual art from over 70 years in a large context.
Image gallery
Der Traum, 1983, Dispersion auf Leinwand auf BrePerrahmen, 253 x 304 cm
Koepfe, 1998, Acryl auf Papier, 136 x 100 cm
Schloss Biesdorf
Achim Freyer was born in Berlin in 1934 and was a master student of Bertolt Brecht. He lived in the former GDR until 1972. After fleeing to the West, he became world-famous as a stage and costume designer.
But Achim Freyer is always first and foremost a painter, a visual artist who expands his creative space limitlessly across all available media.
It is through his boundlessness that he translates his own experience of the world, the inner processes of perception, into painting, theatre, environments and film, turning them into a Gesamtkunstwerk.
Having grown up in two dictatorships, Achim Freyer's work is characterised by a lifelong urge for artistic development and freedom.
The exhibition at Schloss Biesdorf visualises the breaks and continuities of an impressive artistic biography between East and West.
It shows key works from the creative period in the GDR up to 1972, from the time after the Republikflucht, the great abstract picture-songs of the 1980s, the heads and dances of death of the 1990s up to a consistent autonomy of colour freed from any representationalism in the last two decades.
The path from existentialist figurative painting to radical abstraction in the GDR led to the legendary first monographic exhibition of his works at the Rossendorf Nuclear Research Centre near Dresden in 1971.
Freyer's artistic redefinition in the West after his escape from the republic in 1972 with monochrome gouaches on cardboard and wrapping paper, assemblages and environments are an expression of artistic resistance to any form of definition and restriction.
Central rooms of the exhibition are dedicated to these work phases.
Achim Freyer was invited to documenta twice. At documenta 6 (1977), he dealt with the legacy of National Socialism and the division of Germany in the environment "Deutschland - ein Lebensraum". At documenta 8 (1987), Achim Freyer's work "Der gestreckte Blick oder die Krümmung der Fläche zum Raum" ("The stretched gaze or the curvature of the surface into space") showed the connecting lines between visual art and the stage.
- Curated by Johannes Odenthal (Achim Freyer Foundation) and Karin Scheel (Schloss Biesdorf)
Opening as part of the Berlin Art Week
- Sunday, 15 September 2024, 6 pm
Other exhibition venues are the Achim Freyer Foundation's Kunsthaus in Lichterfelde West with Achim Freyer's unique art collection and the church on Hohenzollernplatz, whose side stained glass windows were designed by him in the early 1990s. Current collections of his brilliant late work are also on display here.
Publication
On the occasion of Achim Freyer's 90th birthday, the first monograph on Freyer's artistic oeuvre was published, sensitively designed and lavishly illustrated.
Achim Freyer Pictures. A Monograph 1934-2024, edited by Johannes Odenthal, Leipzig: Spector Books, 2024.
Achim Freyer
The painter, theatre maker and collector Achim Freyer was born in Berlin in 1934, studied painting and graphic arts at the Master School for Graphic Arts and Book Trade in Berlin-Schöneweide from 1951 to 1954, became a master student of Bertolt Brecht in 1955 and fled to the West in 1972 due to artistic reprisals.
He became one of the most influential artistic personalities of post-war modernism in Europe with worldwide resonance.
He received numerous prizes and awards for his stage work - most recently the German theatre prize "DER FAUST 2022" for his life's work.
As a visual artist, he participated in documenta twice and his works were shown in 1981 at the Musee d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in the exhibition "Art Allemagne aujourd'hui".
In 1983, the Berliner Festspiele presented Freyer's first retrospective in the Great Orangery of Charlottenburg Palace. Since then he has been represented in numerous national and international exhibitions from Los Angeles to Venice, Vienna, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Moscow and Seoul.
Freyer taught as a full professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1976 to 1999, founded the Freyer Ensemble in 1988 and the Achim Freyer Foundation with its collection and gallery in 2012.
Further information on Achim Freyer and his work: www.achimfreyer.com
Additional information
Opening hours:
daily 10:00 - 18:00, Fridays 12:00 - 21:00, closed on Tuesdays
Free admission
