Installations, conceptual art, sculptural and photographic works – the previous winners of the Kallmann Prize essentially did not practice in the genre in which the name bearer of the award left his most visible traces: painting. The 2022 winner, who is now receiving the prize named after Hans Jürgen Kallmann, is different: the Berlin artist Aneta Kajzer.
The seven-strong expert jury headed by Rasmus Kleine, director of the Kallmann Museum in Ismaning, awarded the painter, who was born in Kattowitz in 1989, for her examination of the subject of “portrait”. “Kajzer’s colorful paintings move between figuration and abstraction. They are at the same time free, gestural paintings of beguiling sensuality and yet always reveal objects such as people or animals,” says the statement. “Your paintings, some of which are large in size, develop a veritable frenzy of colour,” explains Kleine. Next to him on the jury were Monika Bayer-Wermuth, curator for contemporary art at Museum Brandhorst, Lena von Goedeke, Kallmann Prize winner from 2020, and Michael Sedlmair, chairman of the Hans Jürgen Kallmann Foundation and Ismaninger mayor from 1990 to 1990 2014. The award, which is advertised throughout Germany, is endowed with 8,500 euros. It focuses on contemporary artistic achievements in the themes that were the focus of Hans Jürgen Kallmann’s (1908 to 1991) work: portraits, animals and landscapes.
Kajzer’s works, in which no specific people can be seen, but faces and bodies or just individual elements of them such as eyes, nose, mouth, hand or hair, will be on display from November 5th to January 29th, 2023 in a solo exhibition at the Kallmann- museum presents. “Sometimes the characters appear sad, loving or likeable, then again grotesque or funny, sometimes cute and harmless, then scary again, or they even remind us of familiar faces,” stated the jury. Meanwhile, the faces remained shapeless: “They dissolve again and become blurred in the pure, moving painting on the canvas.” Sometimes you can’t even tell if it’s human or animal. This openness corresponds to the painterly process in which Aneta Kajzer develops her pictures. One can therefore be curious about the works of the award winner, who lives in Berlin and has already exhibited in the Kunstmuseum Bonn or in the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, but also internationally.
Collector Gerhard Schneider will give a guided tour on the occasion of the catalog presentation
The impressive exhibition “Kaleidoscope Expressionism” can still be seen in Ismaning. She looks at the variety of expressive forms of expression that emerged from the dawn of modernity at the beginning of the 20th century, until they were stigmatized during the Nazi era and considered “degenerate”. These are works from the Gerhard Schneider collection that reflect artistic and political and social developments up to 1937. In addition to works by well-known artists, numerous works by almost forgotten artists are also shown.
A comprehensive and richly illustrated catalog (Verlag Kettler) is now being published for the exhibition, which not only presents the works in the current exhibition, but also goes beyond them thematically. Among other things, the upheavals in German art history in the first half of the 20th century are considered. The catalogue, which contains contributions by art historians Maike Bruhns and Dorothea Eimert, as well as Rasmus Kleine and Gerhard Schneider, will be presented this Sunday, August 28, in the Kallmann Museum. The presentation in Ismaning begins at 3 p.m. On this occasion, Gerhard Schneider, who was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit in 2015 for his work as a collector, will also guide through the exhibition.