Ursula Retrospective at Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Ursula-That's me. So what?

A great retrospective on the artist Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm) is on view at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne under the title "Ursula - Das bin ich. So what?" at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Our gallery has also contributed to the 236 works on display with loans.

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About the exhibition

March 18 - July 23, 2023

Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), born in Mittenwalde in 1921 and died in Cologne in 1999, is one of the most important German women artists of the second half of the 20th century. With the exhibition Ursula-Das bin Ich. So what? the Museum Ludwig is dedicating the first comprehensive museum exhibition to her after more than 30 years, thus enabling a new look at her work. On display are 236 works, 44 of which come from the Museum Ludwig collection.

Ursula's life and work offer an alternative narrative of artistic independence. The thesis that surrealism is not a style but a state of mind is vividly demonstrated in her works. In them, she subverts reality and finds the uncanny in the everyday. She challenges authorities of society and art by inventing new worlds in which old hierarchies are thrown overboard and new ways of life are imaginable. Ursula shares this utopian imagination with artists such as Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Unica Zürn.

Ursula's works refuse in their essence to be clearly categorized. Terms such as Naive Painting, Surrealism, or Individual Mythology at best touch upon individual aspects of her idiosyncratic pictorial inventions, which always convey an intense sensual experience. As early as 1954, Jean Dubuffet integrated works by her into his Musée de l'Art Brut. Like André Breton, Dubuffet appreciated the unconventional narrative style of Ursula's texts and paintings, which - at least at first glance - seem to stand outside of time. They often feature mythological references, yet mostly reflect her own sensitivities, fears, and obsessions. "I impose my visions on reality - I am completely artificial," Ursula herself characterized her unusual parallel worlds. Extravagant figures exist here, often the secretive and uncanny is palpable. Beauty and transience, the fairy-like and the monstrous thrive in close proximity. A significant leitmotif of Ursula was Pandora, the woman created from clay in Greek mythology, in whose story the worst evils and the most exquisite gifts are inseparably interwoven. Fantastic hybrid creatures frequently populate Ursula's scenes, her fascination with transformation is tangible everywhere, her works question entrenched dualisms such as woman/man or man/nature.

The aim of the survey exhibition at Museum Ludwig is to make Ursula's fascinating and self-confident work accessible to a young generation of museum visitors. It shows that Ursula's works, especially in their individuality, often touch on fundamental and contemporary themes, be it female self-determination, the questioning of fixed gender identities, or a view of the world in which everything is connected to everything else and mutually dependent.

(Text: Ludwig Museum Cologne)

Link: https://www.museum-ludwig.de/de/ausstellungen/ursula-das-bin-ich-na-und.html

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