Nachricht | Art / Performance - Culture / Media Hans-and-Lea-Grundig Prize 2015 awarded / Release of the publication “Lea Grundig: Art in Times of War”

Commemorating the life and work of Hans Grundig (1901-1958) and Lea Grundig (1906-1977), the anti-fascist artists from Dresden, the prize is awarded in the three categories Visual Arts, Art History, and Art Education.

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From a highly qualified, international pool of over 250 applications which reached the Hans-and-Lea-Grundig-Foundation, the jury under the co-chair of Dr. Eva Atlan (curator at the Jewish Museum, Frankfurt/Main, Germany) and Dr. Eckhart Gillen (independent art historian and curator, Berlin) has chosen three applications: The Russian video- and performance-artists Olga Jitlina (St. Petersburg) in the category “Visual Arts”, the publication and exhibition-project “Ceija Stoijka (1933-2013) – Sogar der Tod hat Angst vor Auschwitz” (“Ceija Stoijka (1933-2013) – Even the Death is afraid of Auschwitz”) by the Berlin-based independent curators and publishers Lith Bahlmann and Matthias Reichelt in the category “Art History”, and the research- and exhibition-project by Prof. Dr. Ines Weizman and her team from the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany entitled “From the Second Life. Documents of forgotten Architectures / Aus dem Zweiten Leben. Dokumente vergessener Architekturen” in the category “Art Education”. Dr. Eva Atlan (Art History), Dr. Eckhart Gillen (Visual Arts), and Oliver Sukrow (Art Education) served as laudatorers 

To mark the awarding of the Hans-and-Lea-Grundig prize 2015, the release of the first-ever publication of one of Lea Grundig’s lesser known works, “Art in Times of War” was also celebrated. Lea Grundig wrote this piece in Palestine during the British mandate. As a Jew and a communist, Lea Grundig fled to Palestine in 1939 to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. Her article which was first published in Hebrew, appeared in the 1944/45 yearbook of the leftist trade union-affiliated magazine “Davar” (The Word) and is published here for the first time as facsimile of the Hebrew original text as well as in a German translation by Prof. Dr. Viktor Golinets (College for Jewish Studies, Heidelberg, Germany) and in an English translation by Noam Ben Ishie (Israel). In his introductory essay, Oliver Sukrow (Munich/Heidelberg) embeds Lea Grundig’s article in the biographical and historical context of its origin and draws out future research questions. Furthermore, the publication edited by Dr. Thomas Flierl, contains a selection of those anti-fascist artworks which were discussed by Lea Grundig and which are nowadays in museums and collections in the USA, the United Kingdom or Russia.

The next Hans-and-Lea-Grundig prize which will be awarded in 2017 will be focusing more on the life and work of Hans Grundig and his time in Dresden. In preparation of the announcement of the next prize, several activities are planned in cooperation with institutions in Dresden to engage with a critical re-examination of the life and work of Hans Grundig. As for the prize-jury, Ines Weizman has been voted into the jury-board to replace Oliver Sukrow who has taken over the coordination of the work of the jury from Dr. Thomas Flierl.

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