The Leipzig School () is a movement of modern

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

from the 1960s to 1980s, founded by painters who predominantly lived and worked in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

, East Germany. The movement had its centre at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, where several of the most prominent members were teachers. Some of their students, or students of students, became prominent and are referred to as the

New Leipzig School The New Leipzig School () is a movement in German painting, centred in the city of Leipzig after the German reunification. The usage and origins of this term are debated. History and characteristics The Leipzig School (painting), Alte Leipziger S ...

History

The first origins of the Leipzig School are rooted in the city's art scene in the 1960s. The main representatives of the Leipzig School (Leipziger Schule) were

Werner Tübke Werner Tübke (30 July 1929 in Schönebeck, Germany – 27 May 2004 in Leipzig, Germany) was a German painter, best known for his monumental Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany, Peasants' War Panorama located in Bad Frankenhausen. Associated wi ...

(1929-2004), Wolfgang Mattheuer (1927-2004) and Bernhard Heisig (1925-2011). All three studied at the Leipzig art academy, the HGB, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (University for Graphics and Book Art) and became professors there themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. Two currents can be distinguished. Heisig's works belong to a group of expressive and colorfully passionate pictures. The second group, to which Mattheuer and Tübke are counted, is more factual and formally strict. All three were repeatedly attacked by the political leadership, only to be courted again at other times. The art of the GDR has the Leipzig School to thank for the fact that the framework of socialist realism prescribed by the party was abandoned in the 1970s and 1980s. Their idiosyncratic imagery made Leipzig a respected center of

fine arts In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creativity, creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function ...

in the GDR and thus laid the foundation for the international reputation of the so-called

since 2004.

References

{{Authority control German art movements Culture in Leipzig 1970s in art

History

Further reading

References