Sarah Schumann

Diane Rosenstein is pleased to present a solo exhibition of photographs, collages, and paintings by Sarah Schumann (GER, 1933-2019), a Surrealist feminist artist who was based in Berlin until her death in 2019. A figurative painter and collagist, Schumann draws on her personal life as a queer artist to create heroic depictions of women in post-war Europe. A collaboration with the Van Ham Art Estate in Cologne, our gallery presentation of significant works from 1959-1998 is Schumann's debut in Los Angeles.

The exhibition includes film and video.

A film - An Image by Sarah Schumann, (1978) - is shown during the run of the exhibition. Directed by Harun Farocki (1944 - 2014), the documentary chronicles Schumann as she makes a single work over a nine week period. Additionally, Schumann's final interview - A Conversation between Sarah Schumann and Bettina Bottinger, 2019 - is screened in tandem with the film.

For over 60 years, Schumann received numerous solo exhibitions throughout Germany, notably in Berlin at Kunststatte Dorothea, Galerie Albrecht, and Galerie am Savignyplatz; in London, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/ICA; and throughout Europe. Recently, Schumann was included in Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 (2023), Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles; and Lesbian Visions (2018), Schwules Museum, Berlin. The artist's paintings and collages are in the permanent collection of the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Morsbroich Museum, Leverkusen; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, and others.

Sarah Schuman, who died in Berlin at the age of 85 in 2019, described herself as 'a courageous, strong, combative artist.' In her last interview, which Bettina Bottinger conducted with her a few months earlier, she explained 'Beauty alone is not enough.'