Marianne Aue: Pictorial Action

Trained at the Krefeld Werkkunstschule (School of Applied Arts), from the early 1960s onwards Marianne Aue (1932 in Freudenthal – 2016 in Leverkusen) became involved in various European avant-garde movements such as ZERO and New Tendencies. During her creative period of less than ten years she contributed to an artistic renaissance in the Rhineland. She was concerned in particular with exploring the potential of artistic materials, thereby expanding notions of classical panel painting. Notably striking are Aue’s monochrome structural reliefs that balance on the threshold between painting and sculpture and play on the interaction of light and shadow. The artist pointedly described her approach with following words, “What I need for my works is shadow”.

Considerable time after her work had disappeared from the public eye, it was only recently that her estate was salvaged and preserved. Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen is now presenting the first museum exhibition of Marianne Aue since the 1960s. This current presentation is an invitation to rediscover Aue’s striking contribution to the post-war European avant-garde.