Louise Stomps

The retrospective at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum traces the consistently independent work of Louise Stomps, whose artistic attitude was fed by existential experiences and whose formal language carefully detached itself from figuration over the decades. Around 45 sculptures and 30 works on paper open up a view of an artist who understood line, form and inner movement as vehicles of expression and retained the human being as a point of reference - even in increasingly abstract works. The exhibition takes visitors through distinctive phases of her life and work: from early wood, plaster and stone sculptures from the Weimar Republic to the works that developed a new language for war experience, mourning and new beginnings after the loss of her studio in 1943. From the 1960s onwards, an oeuvre was created in an old water mill in Upper Bavaria that follows the material itself - the growth and grain of the wood determine the form and lend the larger-than-life figures an almost archaic presence. Complemented by drawings, prints and a film documentary, the exhibition invites visitors to follow Stomps' precise search for the inner, the spiritual, in her artistic development.