With texts by Beate Reifenscheid, Chirikure Chirikure, Maren Bodenstein and Lindiwe Mabuza
German/ English/ French
216 pages, 24.6 x 2.5 x 30.6 cm
Prestel Publishing House
ISBN-10: 3791357034
ISBN-13: 978-3791357034
From the 1950s until 2003 Ruth Baumgarte (1923-2013) travelled to Africa more than forty times, preferably to South, East and Central Africa. The internationally renowned artist, who studied at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts in the early 1940s, was first an illustrator and press illustrator from 1945 to 1950, then a freelance painter and graphic artist. Throughout her life, she retained the sovereign, rapid strokes of situational drawing in her highly individual style of painting. Ruth Baumgarte finds her true fulfillment especially on her expeditions to Africa, whose beauty and fascination have captivated her just as much as the social and political discrepancies that she addresses in her works.
This richly illustrated publication presents Ruth Baumgarte’s expressive, blazingly coloured impressions of Africa, which represent a deeply felt perception of the black continent and are of great suggestive power and reflection.