Bert Papenfuß/Antonio Saura

Four years before it fell, Spanish artist Antonio Saura (1930–1998) dealt with the Berlin Wall. In 1985 he created two cycles consisting of sixty-two overpaintings on mainly black-and-white (and a few color) photographs, eight autonomous works on paper, and a handful of overpainted postcards. Poet Bert Papenfuß (*1965 in Stavenhagen) now juxtaposes these works with poems, aphorisms, and prose. His texts, some of which are historical, reflect photographic traces of the Cold War and are all the more striking when read alongside Saura’s partial overpaintings. Yet he also deals with the wall as a theme in a transcending sense. While Papenfuß uses words to ”paint” written images, Saura “speaks” through color, form, and composition, creating, in two respects, a radically aesthetic historical document about the Berlin Wall.