German artist Anke Doberauer’s “Men” exhibition: 22 paintings that reverse the artist-model relationship

Goethe-Institut Bucharest invites art-loving audiences to the opening of the exhibition “Men” by German artist Anke Doberauer, a project that reverses the traditional relationship between artist and model. The event will take place on December 5, 2024, at 7:00 PM, at the Goethe Pavilion, located on Calea Dorobanti 32, in the presence of Anke Doberauer and Joachim Umlauf, director of the Goethe-Institut Bucharest. The exhibition will be open to the public until January 18, 2025.

A unique artistic perspective on male representation

The exhibition includes 22 life-size works that explore the subtle and complex relationship between artist and model. Doberauer defies traditional art conventions, approaching the male figure through a deeply psychological and ambivalent prism. Art critics emphasize that his works are characterized by intense light and rich chromatics, which give the backgrounds an aura of mystery and psychological substance. The paintings represent not only figures, but also a confrontation of forces between vulnerability and power, between desire and control.

As Philippe Vergne, French curator and director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art since 2019, notes, “these paintings illustrate the model’s moment of maximum vulnerability, redefining traditional roles and relationships in a society where the masculine often dominates the feminine.”

Anke Doberauer – An international career and an unconventional approach

Anke Doberauer, born in 1962, is internationally known for her paintings that bring the male figure to the fore. An artist and professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, Doberauer has been noted since the 1990s for her realistic style, inspired by the tradition of 19th-century painting but reinterpreted through a unique contemporary technique. This is the first international exhibition of a new series of works created in collaboration with HENI Publishing in London, which uses an innovative technique to render details of exceptional quality.

About the approach artistic

The artist’s oil paintings manage to be both realistic and deeply expressive, exploring not only the aesthetic aspects of the male body but also its psychological dimension. Jean-Christophe Ammann, the renowned Swiss art historian and curator, describes her works as “a dialogue between desire, irony and the ambivalence of masculinity,” which offers the viewer a participatory and introspective perspective.