Anna Lena Straube
»Thinking about Eve«

The painterly exploration of femininity determines the artistic oeuvre of Anna Lena Straube. Traditionally, it was male artists who created a female ideal. Anna Lena Straube creates her female ideal in a way that leads the viewer into the inner worlds of the figures.

The artist creates cycles of works that resemble a painterly round dance. Color, content, as well as painterly imagery are created anew with each successive round dance.

“Thinking about Eve” examines the Christian patriarchal invention of woman as the Eve figure. Eve’s guilt complex forces woman into submission and empowers man to rule over her and the world. Women become voiceless fringe groups, disappearing into the background, or allowed to do what the man allows. Older myth-women like Lilith, fierce and untamable, able to switch winged between the upper and lower worlds, were withdrawn from the Bible’s narrative, vilified and reviled. The complete change to a patriarchally organized world community was sealed with the holy scripture of Christianity and is only slowly dissolving in the last hundred years.

How much “Eve” is in you, the painter questions each of her female figures, how much of you is marked by her stigma, and where does indestructible, timeless, feminine complexity reveal itself?

The historical photographs or film stills that Anna Lena Straube uses, for example from “Orphée” by Jean Cocteau, or shots that show the writer Sylvia Plath, are retold as paintings of the “here and now”. Stylistically, the paintings move between realism and poetry, between delicate color glazes and countless drops of color covering the motif.

In contrast, clear white forms appear, suggesting metaphysical light.

The finissage with the artist will take place on 25 June between 18:00 and 22:00.

We look forward to your visit.