Helga Sophia Goetze (12 March 1922 – 29 January 2008) was a German artist, writer and
free love
Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the State (polity), state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues we ...
activist. Her works included
embroidery
Embroidery is the art of decorating Textile, fabric or other materials using a Sewing needle, needle to stitch Yarn, thread or yarn. It is one of the oldest forms of Textile arts, textile art, with origins dating back thousands of years across ...
, paintings and poetry.
Life
Helga Goetze was born in 1922 in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river.
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...
. She lived there until the beginning of World War II, when her family moved to
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
. She married in 1942 and subsequently had seven children.
In 1968, on a trip to
Sicily
Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...
, she met a Sicilian lover with whom she said she experienced her first orgasm; this inspired her to leave her husband, join the
free love
Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the State (polity), state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues we ...
movement, and live in a variety of communes and shared apartments.
Work
From the late 1960s onwards, Goetze embroidered hundreds of canvases, most featuring images of genitalia and female sexuality, and some depicting scenes from the Christian Bible and other religious texts.
[ She also painted works depicting her Sicilian lover and her ex-husband,][ and wrote over 3000 poems.][ In 1982, she moved from Hamburg to Berlin, where she was known to sit in front of the ]Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (), mostly known simply as the Memorial Church (German: ''Gedächtniskirche'' ) is a Protestant church affiliated with the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia, a regional body ...
or TU Berlin
Tu or TU may refer to:
Language
* Tu language
* Tu (cuneiform), a cuneiform sign
* ''tu'' or ''tú'' the 2nd-person singular subject pronoun in many languages; see personal pronoun
* T–V distinction (from the Latin pronouns ''tu'' and ''vos'') ...
every day with a sign that read "''Ficken ist Frieden''" ("Fucking is peace").Rosa von Praunheim
Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky (born Holger Radtke; 25 November 1942), known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, is a German film director, author, producer, professor of directing and one of the most influential and famous LGBT social move ...
's films '' Red Love'' (1982) and '' City of Lost Souls'' (1983) with Jayne County
Jayne County (born Wayne Rogers) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, record producer, and visual artist whose career has spanned six decades. Under the name Wayne County (inspired by Wayne County, Michigan), she was the vocalist of infl ...
.
Collections and exhibits
A collection of her embroidery is displayed at the Collection de l'art brut
Collection or Collections may refer to:
Computing
* Collection (abstract data type), the abstract concept of collections in computer science
* Collection (linking), the act of linkage editing in computing
* Garbage collection (computing), autom ...
museum in Lausanne
Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...
; a biographical commentary published by the museum notes that Goetze's combination of embroidery and sexual imagery "proclaims women's sexual liberation via a technique that was once the symbol of their subjection".[ Her embroidery has also been exhibited in the Berlin gallery Wonderloch Kellerland.][
]
Death
Goetze suffered a stroke
Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...
in August 2007[ and died on 29 January 2008.
]
See also
* List of German women artists
This is a list of women artists who were born in Germany or whose artworks are closely associated with that country.
A
* Louise Abel (1841–1907), German-born Norwegian photographer
* Tomma Abts (born 1967), abstract painter
* Elisabeth von Ad ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goetze, Helga
1922 births
2008 deaths
German women artists
German women poets
Artists from Magdeburg
German embroiderers
German women activists
Free love advocates
German outsider artists
Women outsider artists
German women textile artists
German textile artists