People are at the heart of the work of artist Sylvia Hagen, whose works are now being shown by the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation in a comprehensive retrospective. The exhibition opens on August 25, 2024.
Image above: Sylvia Hagen, Der Tanz, 2017, Bronze, 65 x 29 x 11 cm © Bernd Borchardt
In her studio in Altlangsow, on the edge of Germany and with a view of the vastness of the Oderbruch, Sylvia Hagen captures the essence of man, his body and his psyche in expressive sculptures and drawings. The artist, who sees herself primarily as a sculptor, initially worked in stone for many years before turning to clay in the early 1990s. The clay sculptures also form the starting point for her bronzes. By initially building up forms from clay slabs in an architectural process, which she continues to work on, she approaches her figures over weeks, months and sometimes years. This working practice is more akin to a search than to a decisive artistic approach. In her nude drawings in charcoal and her gouaches, too, bodies are formed from searching strokes. Her works make the constant change visible and she succeeds in capturing the genuinely human in all its contradictions more sharply than some photographs are able to do.
Sylvia Hagen belongs to a generation of East German artists in which women in particular did not receive the attention that their outstanding work deserved for a long time after reunification. This has now changed, and the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation’s retrospective allows visitors to experience the unique work of a highly recognized artist.
The exhibition is not organized chronologically, but according to the materials bronze – clay – paper. This reveals Hagen’s special approach to these working materials: the raw material does not conceal the creative process, the sculptures and drawings are a revelation of their creation process. Nothing is glossed over, nothing smoothed over. The material is allowed to work, to oxidize. Time leaves its traces on the surfaces and thus becomes part of the artwork. Hagen builds up her bodies, destroys them again and starts anew. Her constant search for and approach to form is a dance on the fine line between figuration and abstraction.
Hagen was born in Treuenbrietzen in 1947. She began studying medicine and switched to sculpture at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art in 1971. From 1980, she lived with the sculptor Werner Stötzer (1931-2010) in Altlangsow in Oderbruch. Her works are represented in numerous collections. In 2006 and 2017, she won the Brandenburg Art Prize in the sculpture category, and in 2022 she received the Prime Minister’s Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Since July 20, 2024, Hagen’s work Gegen den Strom has been on permanent display in Neuhardenberg Castle Park as a memorial to Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg and the German resistance of July 20, 1944.
A collection of texts on Sylvia Hagen’s work will be published to accompany the exhibition.
WHEN?
Opening: Sunday, August 25, 2024, 3 p.m.
Exhibition dates: Sunday, August 25 – Sunday, December 22, 2024
Opening hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 6 pm
Guided tours of the exhibition with Sylvia Hagen
Saturday, September 28, 4 p.m.
Saturday, October 12, 4 p.m.
Saturday, November 23, 3 p.m.
Saturday, December 7, 4 p.m.
WHERE?
Schloss Neuhardenberg (Neuhardenberg Castle)
Schinkelplatz
15320 Neuhardenberg
COST?
Exhibition hall: free admission
