Uncensored. Annegret Soltau—A Retrospective

The body is political—as the work of artist Annegret Soltau (b. 1946) impressively demonstrates. The Städel Museum is dedicating the first retrospective to her, developed in collaboration with the artist. Soltau’s art has been causing a stir since the 1970s and remains as relevant as ever. Long considered an insider’s tip despite her art historical significance, Soltau’s work is now regarded as one of the most important positions in feminist photography and body art.

“Annegret Soltau’s radical formal language and fearless deconstruction of the human body open up new perspectives on identity, corporeality and artistic self-determination. Her art is highly expressive and ahead of its time. With this first retrospective, we honour more than five decades of Annegret Soltau’s artistic work. At the same time, it underscores the Städel Museum’s commitment to making pioneering women artists visible and to encouraging a broad public to engage with essential themes in contemporary art”, explains Philipp Demandt, Director of the Städel Museum.

Central themes in Soltau’s work include feminism, body politics and the challenge of human and female identity. To this end, she has developed her own innovative techniques that transcend the boundaries of photography—photo-sewing, photo-restitching and photo-etching. In her self-portraits, Soltau questions female role models and sheds light on social norms by visualizing complex emotional worlds, inner conflicts and emotional states. Since the late 1970s, she has devoted herself to an artistic exploration of pregnancy and motherhood—themes that have been underrepresented in art for centuries and have only recently begun to receive increasing attention in both society and the art world. Her work is also a poignant expression of the ageing of the female body and questions of mortality. Soltau’s work has repeatedly been subject to public censorship; her depictions deviate from established aesthetic conventions and are perceived as provocative.

Svenja Grosser, Head of Contemporary Art and curator of the exhibition, summarizes: “Annegret Soltau uses the body, her own self, as a venue for negotiating social structures. With her radical photo-sewing, she has created an entirely new artistic language and established the female body as a medium of self-empowerment. While she is internationally recognized, she has repeatedly faced drastic censorship in this country. We would like to correct this contradictory reception and present the artist Annegret Soltau for what she is: a pioneer of feminist art in Germany.”

With more than eighty works, the exhibition offers a comprehensive insight into her multifaceted oeuvre, which ranges from drawings to extended photography, video and installation. Among them are groundbreaking works from Soltau’s studio, some of which are being exhibited for the first time. Important loans from renowned institutions such as the Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, the Lenbachhaus in Munich and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe complete the exhibition.

Director: Dr Philipp Demandt
Curator: Svenja Grosser (Head of Contemporary Art, Städel Museum)
Press contact: Pamela Rohde (Head of Press and Online Communication): presse@staedelmuseum.de / T (+49 69) 605098 170
Press material: here (texts and images for download)