Knotted together, intertwined, clasped - this is how Hans Hendrik Grimmling repeatedly depicts his subject, the human drama of existence, the struggle, the tragedy. It is the people who struggle with each other, who suffer, who despair and who draw hope that interest him. For Grimmling, art is not an accessory, but something universal, something urgently necessary. ‘It is the salvation of life,’ he says.

The exhibition explores the foundations of his painting, the origin of the painterly processes that create forms from colours and the power that is expressed in his pictures. Using only a few colours, mainly black, red, yellow and white, Grimmling's work moves between figurative representation and abstraction. The strong rhythm of the forms is constantly reassembled into typical motifs such as the head, hand, bird and knot, visualising the fragile side of humanity. At the same time, his pictures are refuges, moments of fixation.

Starting with some important early works by the painter from the beginning of the 1980s, the exhibition is dedicated to the artist's entire oeuvre in four large chapters. From the extensive work complex of Knots (1990s) and the group of works German Everyday Life (2007) to the paintings of the 2000s, which are strongly characterised by gestures, to the present day, it spans the arc from the early motifs to abstraction and the recurring bird and mask paintings of 2017-2024.

Hans-Hendrik Grimmling (*1947 in Zwenkau near Leipzig) was one of the initiators of the legendary “Erster Leipziger Herbstsalon” in 1984, an exhibition that is considered a milestone in the history of non-conformist GDR art. Grimmling left for West Berlin in 1986 in connection with the repression surrounding the ‘Herbstsalon’. From 2001, he taught there at the Technischen Kunsthochschule Berlin, from 2006 until his retirement in 2017 as professor emeritus.

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