Siegfried Neuenhausen: Bruchstück Mensch

In the organizer's words:

Siegfried Neuenhausen (born 1931) has been one of the internationally renowned contemporary artists since the 1960s. His works are socially critical, ironic, sometimes drastic and highly topical, especially against a political backdrop. Neuenhausen's works refer to socially isolated people, migrants and the politically persecuted. He illustrates existential dangers, characterizes people as threatened and broken, thus showing the fragment of the human being.

In 1964, Siegfried Neuenhausen was appointed professor at the Braunschweig University of Art. Siegfried Neuenhausen has been directly present in the Braunschweig cityscape since 1981 with his large-format sculpture "Katzenstele".

The Städtisches Museum Braunschweig has a large collection of paintings, sculptures and prints by the artist. Thanks to a generous donation from Siegfried Neuenhausen, the collection of prints, watercolors and drawings was expanded by more than 80 works in 2023. Based on the donation, the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig is presenting an exhibition that provides an overview of Neuenhausen's multifaceted oeuvre from the early 1960s to the present day.

The exhibition focuses on prints. The etchings from the 1970s from the portfolio "Goya Variations" are particularly noteworthy. In these sheets, Neuenhausen draws on works by Francisco de Goya to illustrate political and social problems.

However, the exhibition also includes well-known offset prints such as "Juan Borges de Souza" and "Man in a Box", a work that shows the covered head of a person in a simple fruit box and thus expresses the anonymity of politically persecuted people - who become fragments of human beings.
The portrait sculpture of "Hortense David" also combines historical retrospection and political issues. The Frenchwoman Hortense David was a brush maker who was involved in the barricade battles against the pro-royal government after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and the fall of Napoleon III. The fighter was sentenced to forced labor for life on 16 April 1872 and serves Neuenhausen as an example of freedom fights that still have to be fought today.