1+1=3
The Art Worlds of Mary Bauermeister
8 October 2022 to 5 March 2023
The materials and techniques that Mary Bauermeister uses in her work are varied and surprising. They range from stones, sand and honeycomb, to straws, glass lenses, wood and textiles – and she complements these with writing and drawings. When Arte Povera emerged at the end of the 1960s, Mary Bauermeister had long been experimenting with “poor”, non-artistic materials. She has made a living from art since selling her first painting in 1955, and despite huge success in the New York art scene in the 1960s, has remained unknown to a wide audience.
With around 60 exhibits from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the exhibition is the first of its scale in Germany to offer an insight into Mary Bauermeister's branching and idiosyncratic artistic œuvre. Her view of art and her own work is closely interwoven with her life.
Now 88 years of age, Mary Baumeister has always remained open to surprising and coincidental experiences beyond her own ideas and “logic”. Her attitude is best encapsulated by a mathematically illogical sum, which she declared as her signature decades ago: 1+1=3.
Funded by: Kulturstiftung des Landes Schleswig-Holstein
In cooperation with Die Pumpe e.V., the documentary film Mary Bauermeister: One and One is Three will be screened at the cinema in Kiel (in German):