“DIT IS DOCH EIGENTLICH OCH JANZ SCHÖN”
The Painter Annelotte Spieß – A Century of Colour and Poetry
14th February – 10th April 2026
Annelotte Spieß was born in 1912 in Magdeburg and received her artistic training at the University of Art Education in Berlin-Schöneberg. Her life and work spanned profound political and social upheavals—from the German Empire and the Weimar Republic through National Socialism and the GDR to reunified Germany. After the Second World War, following periods spent with her two children in Neuwasser (East Prussia), she found a new home in Druxberge in the Magdeburg Börde, where she worked as both a teacher and a painter.
Her works are marked by a refined sensitivity to colour and a perceptive sense of balance—between change and continuity, playful lightness and composed calm. Careful observation of her surroundings is reflected throughout her work, as are the influences of her teacher Curt Lahs and her engagement with the art of Paul Klee. A sense of playful openness—particularly evident in her works from Hiddensee, where it often condenses into a vibrant lightness of colour—points to her artistic independence. Questioning instructions and maintaining an unorthodox attitude accompanied her throughout much of her life. In 1933, at the beginning of the National Socialist dictatorship, this stance led to a temporary ban from her studies.
Stays on the Adriatic island of Krk during the 1930s had a lasting impact on her artistic practice. The blue of the Adriatic finds an echo in later watercolours created on Hiddensee. Water appears as a unifying element in her oeuvre—both as a recurring motif and through her preferred medium of watercolour. Especially during her stays on Hiddensee, she worked with great discipline, often setting herself the goal of completing one painting a day.
Throughout her life, painting remained a central necessity and a source of joy for Annelotte Spieß. It also provided her with support during difficult periods. “I must start painting again,” she wrote to a fellow student in 1979 after the early death of her husband.
Her recurring motifs included flowers—particularly poppies from her own garden—landscapes of the island of Hiddensee, impressions from travels abroad, and views from the living-room window of her red brick house in Druxberge. Many of her works were created directly outdoors; weather conditions such as raindrops occasionally became integral elements of the compositions.
Creating spaces for art, culture, and community was a special concern for Annelotte Spieß and her husband, Hans Arthur. In 1980, her former classroom at the village school was transformed into the Kleine Galerie Druxberge, which for many years served as a place of exchange and cultural encounter in a rural setting.
With her colour-intensive and vibrant works, Annelotte Spieß developed an art shaped by a desire for peaceful coexistence and mutual consideration. Her life encompassed a century of profound upheavals—marked by ruptures, wars, and new beginnings—yet she remained true to herself throughout: close to nature, inquisitive, and independent. Her watercolours, which were still exhibited in Berlin in her presence on the occasion of her hundredth birthday, testify to an enduring joy in colour, nature, and life.
Next Exhibition
IM LICHT DER LETZTEN HOFFNUNG
(“In the Light of the Last Stance – Memory Carries Peace”)
Erinnerung trägt den Frieden
Marguerite Blume-Cárdenas ° Christopher Blazer ° Wiebke Conrad
02nd May – 26th June 2026
Vernissage: Sa, 02nd May 6-10pm
The exhibition, „Im Licht der letzten Haltung – Erinnerung trägt den Frieden“ is a reflection on what remains when everything else recedes. It asks about those moments in which certainties begin to waver and stance emerges as the last visible form of resistance.
What remains when structures collapse?
When political orders end or inner certainties begin to falter?
In the light of the last stance, that moment appears in which nothing secure remains—except for what we uphold within ourselves.
This exhibition is not merely a group show. It spans over 80 years of lived stance.
Three generations—born in 1942, 1963, and 1992—enter into an open dialogue. Their works in sandstone, gouache, ink, acrylic, charcoal, and graphite reveal how differently peace, memory, and inner resilience can be understood—and at the same time, how closely these questions remain intertwined.
May 8, 1945 marks the end of the Second World War—a historical turning point that signified liberation while also establishing a new responsibility. Yet the end of a system does not automatically bring peace. History persists. In bodies, in families, in narratives—in what is passed on unspoken and cannot be resolved across generations.
What has been passed down?
What have we inherited—consciously or unconsciously?
Which inner landscapes have grown from this?
Between collapse and reorientation, between vulnerability and resilience, images and sculptures emerge that make the state of in-between tangible. When bombed earth gives rise to life again over time, this too becomes an image of human resilience. From destruction, something new emerges—yet this new is never detached from what came before.
Memory is not a nostalgic glance backward, but a foundation. Perhaps even a prerequisite for peace—for understanding, and for a conscious, embodied awareness of what has been and what may become.
Three artists—three generations.
Their works resist fixed meanings and open a space in which stance becomes visible.
What becomes apparent in this intergenerational context is a shift in artistic language—not as a linear development, but as a change in tone. In the works of Marguerite Blume-Cárdenas, experience manifests directly within the material. Stone remains stone. The form is clear, the gesture decisive. Nothing is softened. The sculptures carry the weight of what has been lived—what has been seen, what has been passed on. Here, stance is physical. Presence means endurance. Moving two decades forward, one encounters in Christopher Balzer a different form of condensation. The concrete dissolves into structure, into rhythm, into line. History appears not as documented memory, but as a lingering tension. His drawings oscillate between figure and sign—they sound an alarm without explaining. In the works of Wiebke Conrad, the focus ultimately shifts into the innermost space of the body. Proximity, vulnerability, and touch replace monumental gesture. Fragility becomes visible—not as weakness, but as potential. Here, peace appears not as a political event, but as an interpersonal condition. What emerges is not a “softer” narrative, but a shift from the external event to the inner realm.