Einar Schleef - The Painter

Einar Schleef, born in Sangerhausen in 1944 and died in Berlin in 2001, was a director and playwright who influenced and polarised the German theatre scene like no other. His works have gained him international fame. Yet very few are familiar with his paintings and graphic works, and if so, then only in connection with his theatre work.
The Stiftung Moritzburg received Einar Schleef's graphic artworks on permanent loan in 2004. In this exhibition, viewers were able to witness and experience the magnificent, untapped potential of these yet unknown works of art. The exhibition also anchored Schleef's paintings and illustrations in Saxony-Anhalt - a region that played a large role in his life and artistic development.
The paintings and illustration featured in the exhibition spanned his entire artistic career. In addition to the major painting cycles of the 1980s and 1990s, pictures of Germany [Deutschlandbilder], diary illustrations and telephone boxes, the exhibition also included still-lifes, illustrations, landscapes, interiors, painted writings [Schriftbilder] and portraits. The vacated Karstadt department store on Mansfelderstrasse in Halle provided the ideal conditions for this project. As the exhibition ran concurrently with the Handel Festival and the "Theater der Welt" festival in Halle, it presented the multifaceted character of his work to especially large audiences who might have known Schleef as a theatre artist, but not necessarily as a fine artist.

Curator: Michael Freitag

Venue and schedule:
Former Karstadt building, Mansfelder Straße, Halle/Saale: 26 April - 20 July 2008