Long before the word art was increasingly used in conjunction with the word feminist and the results of this alliance began to approach an inflated level of complexity, Sarah Schumann’s works examined old and newly acquired images of women, and – importantly – these examinations took place in her works themselves, as part of their aesthetic development.

(Silvia Bovenschen, 1977)

The Berlin painter Sarah Schumann (1933–2019) was one of the leading artistic figures of the German post-war period. She saw herself as a painter, but her work as a graphic designer, essayist, filmmaker, actress and curator – not to mention her status as one of the most visible protagonists of the Neue frauenbewegung (New Women’s Movement) in the 1970s and beyond – also made a profound impact on the social consciousness. In 2015, her long-time partner Silvia Bovenschen dedicated an impressive and insightful literary memorial to her with her 2015 book Sarahs Gesetz (Sarah’s Law), following Harun Farocki’s equally fascinating cinematic tribute Ein Bild von Sarah Schumann (An Image by Sarah Schumann) from 1976.

In the late 1950s, Sarah Schumann (then still known as Maria Brockstedt) became famous for her electrifying, almost “alchemical” Informel paintings, which have been “rediscovered” in a number of group exhibitions in recent years (including Action Gesture Paint and InformELLE). At the same time, Schumann began creating her famous Schockcollagen (Shock Collages, 1957–64), which form an important art-historical link between Hannah Höch’s earlier collages and Grete Stern’s photo montages, as well as Martha Rosler’s later collages. Feminist themes were already present in these collages and would go on to dominate Schumann’s work in the 1970s, establishing the artist as one of the leading figures in feminist art discourse. As one of the curators of the groundbreaking exhibition Künstlerinnen international 1877–1977 (Women Artists International 1877–1977) and the designer of many publications by the Neue Frauenbewegung in West Berlin, Sarah Schumann gave feminist issues in the visual arts a face and a voice from an early stage, even though – as a contributor to Die schwarze botin (The black messenger), for example – she belonged to a loose yet radical faction that sharply criticised sentimentality and identitarianism, which makes her work all the more relevant today.

Christoph Keller, the former art publisher, designer and exhibition organiser, has organised a museum-like exhibition at Meyer Riegger for Berlin Art Week 2025, featuring a number of loans from private collections, most of which have never before been shown in public. This includes around sixty Schockcollagen and approximately fifteen paintings from the late 1950s, which were recently rediscovered by chance; they have since been restored and can now be presented together in an exhibition for the first time.

The Informel paintings – which were exhibited when they were first created at Zimmergalerie Franck (1958), Rolf Jährling’s Galerie Parnass (1961 and 1964) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London (1962) – attest to this unique path taken by a young female painter in a post-war art scene almost entirely dominated by men. Parallel to these works – and as the artist frequently pointed out, mutually dependent on them – are the so-called Schockcollagen, which were created between 1957 and around 1964; Sarah Schumann repeatedly identified these works in their various formats – paper collages, photographic reproductions of the collages and offset prints – as the nucleus of her oeuvre. The iconography of these collages combines surrealist themes of unconsciousness and dreams with questions about the social standing of women and an intuitive diagnosis of the traumatised mental state of post-war society, in which “beauty and horror” collide in a unique way. In the exhibition, the Schockcollagen are shown as original paper collages as well as photographic reproductions alongside her paintings for the first time.

These early works evolved into a synthesis of artistic processes leading to Sarah Schumann’s well-known collage works of the 1970s – monumental mixed-media collages that portray the protagonists of the Neue Frauenbewegung in Berlin such as Helke Sander, Evelyn Kuwertz, Ann Anders, Marianne Herzog and Silvia Bovenschen, among others. A small selection of these works is on display in the exhibition. The 1970s are also represented by numerous feminist publications featuring Schumann’s collaged cover images and her signature style, which are presented as historic documents.

Harun Farocki’s film Ein Bild von Sarah Schumann (1976/78) and a new edition of Michaela Melián’s work on Künstlerinnen international 1877–1977 (2012) will also be on show.

With this exhibition of works by Sarah Schumann, which are mostly not for sale, Meyer Riegger continues its efforts to promote early feminist artists, as it did with previous exhibitions on Meret Oppenheim, Sheila Hicks and Jacqueline de Jong – the exhibition also fits within the broader context of contemporary female artists represented by the gallery, such as Miriam Cahn, Katinka Bock, Eva Koťátková and Tamina Amadyar.

Parallel to the exhibition, the book Sarah Schumann: Schockcollagen 1957–1964 (Sarah Schumann: Shock collages 1957–1964), edited by Christoph Keller and featuring contributions by Christoph Keller, Klaus Reichert and Vojin Saša Vukadinović, will be published by Spector Books, Leipzig at the end of August 2025.

To accompany the exhibition, Meyer Riegger will host an evening event at Berlin’s Klick cinema on 25 September titled An evening for Sarah Schumann, which features films by, with and about Sarah Schumann (including works by Harun Farocki, Helke Sander and Michaela Melián). The screening will be followed by an informal discussion featuring a number of Sarah Schumann’s collaborators (tba).