Current exhibition

Irma Stern. A Modern Artist between Berlin and Cape Town

13. July to 
2. November 2025
Portrait of a Black woman, sitting on a wooden chair, her arms crossed in front of her chest

Irma Stern, Maid in Uniform, 1955, oil on canvas, Irma Stern Trust Collection, Cape Town © Irma Stern Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, photo: Courtesy of the Trustees of the Irma Stern Collection, Cape Town

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Irma Stern, Portrait of Roza van Gelderen, 1930s, oil on canvas, Irma Stern Trust Collection, Cape Town © Irma Stern Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, photo: Courtesy of the Trustees of the Irma Stern Collection, Cape Town 

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Irma Stern, Watussi Woman in Red, 1944, oil on canvas, Private Collection © Irma Stern Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, photo: Courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town

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Irma Stern, Umgababa, 1922, oil on canvas, Irma Stern Trust Collection, Cape Town © Irma Stern Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, photo: Courtesy of the Trustees of the Irma Stern Collection, Cape Town 

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Portrait of a young Black man in a wide-open blue shirt and red headscarf, standing in front of a large floral arrangement

Irma Stern, Zanzibar Boy, 1945, oil on canvas, Rupert Art Foundation, Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch © Irma Stern Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, photo: Courtesy of Rupert Art Foundation, Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch

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The expressionist Irma Stern (1894–1966) is considered one of the most important representatives of modern art in South Africa. In Germany, however, her art is hardly known. This was once different: growing up between the two countries, she studied painting in Weimar and Berlin. In the 1920s, the capital’s most important galleries exhibited her expressive portraits and colorful landscapes. She was a founding member of the Novembergruppe and a close friend of the Brücke artist Max Pechstein.With the rise of the Nazis, Stern’s career in Germany came to an abrupt end: as a Jew, she was persecuted and her expressionist works were denounced as “degenerate.”

 

Stern’s work is complex and marked by an indissoluble historical ambivalence: as a woman, she had to assert herself in a male-dominated art world. As a Jew, she experienced exclusion and antisemitism. At the same time, as a white artist, she benefited from the racist social structures of colonialism and the apartheid system and presented herself as an “expert” on Black cultures. The Brücke-Museum is dedicating the first solo museum exhibition in her former home city of Berlin to this important artist of global modernism.

 

Over 40 paintings, drawings, and watercolors from international collections, primarily South African, enter into dialogue with works by the Brücke artists and invite visitors to (re)discover Irma Stern. A site-specific intervention by South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga reflects on Stern’s life and work from a queer Black perspective.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Irma Stern, edited by Lisa Hörstmann and Lisa Marei Schmidt for the Brücke-Museum, with contributions by Irene Below, LaNitra M. Berger, Lisa Hörstmann, Gcotyelwa Mashiqa, Athi-Patra Ruga and Lisa Marei Schmidt, Hirmer Verlag, 208 pages, museum edition 39 euros

 

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Publications

Irma Stern

Catalogue
Edited by: Lisa Hörstmann and Lisa Marei Schmidt for Brücke-Museum
Texts:  Valentina Bay, Irene Below, LaNitra M. Berger, Lisa Hörstmann, Gcotyelwa Mashiqa, Athi-Patra Ruga and Lisa Marei Schmidt

Hirmer Verlag
208 pages
German / English
ISBN: 978-3-7774-4529-8
45 €
Pulished April 2025

2020-2025
Irma Stern

Staff

Lisa Marei Schmidt, Curator

Lisa Hörstmann, Co-Curator

Valentina Bay, Assistant Curator and Project Management

Daniela Bystron, Curator of Outreach

Ximena Gutiérrez Toro, Curatorial Assistant of Outreach

Stoodio Santiago da Silva, Exhibition Design

Dr. Pegah Byroum-Wand, Coordination, moderation, and scientific mentoring Nicht einfach (not easy)