Martina Kügler
05.09.2025 - 07.09.2025
UNINTERRUPTED - MARTINA KÜGLER
MOUNTAINS
Opening: Friday, 05.09., 18.00-22.00 h
The exceptional Frankfurt artist Martina Kügler (1945-2017) would have turned 80 this year - Galerie Mountains, Berlin is presenting the exhibition Uninterrupted - Martina Kügler as part of FRANKFURT ART EXPERIENCE 2025. As a graduate of the Städelschule, she has been anchored in Frankfurt her entire life, not least because of her experiences beyond the consensual reality. Since 2020, Galerie Mountains has been Exhibitions Kügler's unique oeuvre in curated Exhibitions and at fairs; most recently, the gallery presented works in the acclaimed exhibition Hinter Deinem Schatten, with works by Martina Kügler, Nschotschi Haslinger and Miriam Cahn. The exhibition Uninterrupted - Martina Kügler brings together works and loans from the holdings of private art collections and the Martina Kügler Circle of Friends for the first time.
Martina Kügler was a maverick to the point of radicalism. As an artist and poet, she developed a powerful, headstrong oeuvre outside of institutional channels. Her drawings, paintings and collages are imbued with emancipated, psychological tension, physical alienation and an often drastic visual language. Kügler processes personal experiences - including femininity, sexuality and schizophrenia - in a breathtaking pictorial world that oscillates between surrealism and existential self-questioning. Kügler's ability to make mental states visible in an undisguised, abysmal way and without regard for conventions is particularly striking. Her figures - often exposed, delimited and decomposed - show the range of inner struggles and at the same time question social standardizations of body and identity.
The exhibition demonstrates Kügler's mastery, above all her proximity to the medium of drawing, especially her so-called 'one-line drawings' - lines that appear to be drawn without any separation and create an uninterrupted, almost dance-like flow in the picture. Drawing as a performative act, as a trace of a movement, a gesture that does not primarily depict, but feels, lives through and witnesses. These performative lines lend the grotesque or deformed figures an emotional vitality that remains accessible despite the innermost themes. With a sometimes childlike directness, Kügler creates an ambivalence that lends her works a disturbing fascination.
Since the 1970s, Kügler has created works that are not only radical and modern from a woman's perspective, but also touch on central questions of our time: How do we deal with closeness? How much intimacy can the individual tolerate? Why do we find it so difficult to have real relationships that are not characterized by doubt, withdrawal or our own projections onto others? many of her works show double-gendered figures who seem physically turned towards each other, but emotionally disconnected in silent aggression - a powerful reflection of today's relationship dynamics. In a world where digital contact seems limitless, but at the same time emotional insecurity and alienation are growing, Kügler's images offer a space for reflection. These depictions of relationship dissonance touch on something that often remains unspoken for a young generation today: the insecurity of togetherness - while we as a society test out the new possibilities of non-binding contact.
Martina Kügler was born in 1945 in Schreiberhau, Silesia, and moved with her family to Frankfurt am Main as a child, where she trained as a color lithographer. From 1966 to 1972, she studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under Prof. Johann Georg Geyger and Karl Bohrmann. Through her participation in the traveling exhibition Junggesellenmaschinen / Les Machines Célibataires (1975-77, Kunsthalle Bern, Venice Biennale, Brussels, Düsseldorf, Paris, Malmö, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Vienna) curated by Harald Szeemann, even before her first institutional solo exhibition in 1976 at Kunstraum München, the artist received her first international attention and her works became known to a wider public. Her works can be found in the collections of the Städel Museum, Deutsche Bank, the Klewan Collection, A Private Collection Frankfurt and numerous other private collections.
Illustration: Martina Kügler, 1975 © Peter Sarowy
Lecture and discussion: Sunday, 07.09., 11.00-12.00 h
Lecture by Teresa Jungwirth: "Queer art? Desire and gender in the drawings of Martina Kügler. How a Frankfurt artist in the 1970/80s anticipated the gender debate of today", followed by a discussion with Tyrown Vincent and Teresa Jungwirt.
Mountains
Pop-up exhibition
Fahrgasse 87 (corner of MMK Museum)
60311 Frankfurt am Main
T. +49.151.50658677
E. info@mountains.gallery