Maina-Miriam Munsky
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Maina-Miriam Munsky (born Meina Munsky: 24 September 1943 - 26 October 1999) was a German
New Realist New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 ** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995 * "New" (Daya song), 2017 * "New" (No Doubt song), 19 ...
artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...
. She came to prominence in
West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
during the 1970s with a series of "larger than life" (''"großformatige"'') paintings of births, abortions and
surgical procedures Many surgical procedure names can be broken into parts to indicate the meaning. For example, in gastrectomy, "ectomy" is a suffix meaning the removal of a part of the body. "Gastro-" means stomach. Thus, ''gastrectomy'' refers to the surgical rem ...
.


Biography


Provenance and early years

Meina Munsky was born the second of her parents' two daughters in
Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel (; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District Wolfenbüttel (; ) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel (district), Wolfenbüttel Distri ...
at the height of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Oskar Munsky (1910-1945 or 1947), her father, was a young architect who had studied with
Hans Poelzig Hans Poelzig (30 April 1869 – 14 June 1936) was a German architect, painter and set designer. Life Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to Countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman. Uncert ...
and worked during the 1930s on several high-profile public projects such as the Reichswerke Hermann Göring (industrial complex) and the rebuild of the Olypmpia Stadium underground station. He died, probably in a prisoner, of war camp when his daughter was an infant. Her mother, Gertrud Schmidt (1912-1986), worked as a photographer. Maina Munsky concluded her own schooling in March 1962 when she left the Anna-Vorwerk-Oberschule (as her secondary school was known at that time) with a Realschulabschluss (middle-school course completion certificate). For the next three years she studied with the artist Peter Voigt at the Braunschweig University of Art (''"Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig"'' / HBK).


Student years

In 1963, after falling in love with a professor at the HBK in Braunschweig, Munsky became pregnant and had an
abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
which necessitated a trip to
Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
, since having an abortion in Germany would have created a risk of criminal charges. The experience can be seen as having triggered a subsequent artistic theme. Jan Schüler: Die Angst wegmalen. Über die Geburt, den Tod und die Wandlung im Leben. In: Maina-Miriam Munsky. Die Angst wegmalen. Bestandsverzeichnis der Gemälde und Zeichnungen 1964–1998. Verlag Kettler, Bönen 2013, , pp. 18, 26, 28, 30-32, 36, 38 Supported by a bursary, from 1964 till 1967 she continued her studies at the Fine Arts Academy in
Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...
. She studied with Ugo Capocchini and emerged with an Italian qualification as a primary school teacher. While in Florence she underwent an image makeover, colouring her blonde hair black: it remained black for the rest of her life. She also changed to dressing exclusively black and changed the name on her birth certificate from "Meina Munsky" to "Maina-Miriam Munsky". The Jewish provenance of the name "Miriam" was significant. Between 1966 and 1970 she was in
West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
, studying at the Berlin University of the Arts (known at that time as the ''"Hochschule für Bildende Künste"'' / HdK), where she studied with
Alexander Camaro Alexander Camaro (actual name Alphons Bernhard Kamarofski: 27 September 1901 – 20 October 1992) was a German artist (painter) and dancer. Life Alphons Bernhard Kamarofski was born and grew up in Breslau (as Wrocław was known before) 19 ...
and
Hermann Bachmann Carl Hermann Bachmann (7 October 1864 – 5 July 1937) was a German operatic baritone, opera director and singing teacher. Life Born in Cottbus, Bachmann, who initially became a merchant, took singing lessons with Gustav Schmidt in Berlin. He ...
. She had her first solo exhibition in 1968. It was during her time at the HdK that she produced her first paintings of embryos in the womb.


Peter Sorge

There are indications that Meina Munsky started a teenage romance with the artist Peter Sorge during their school days, but the two later drifted apart. In any case, in the later 1960s, when she was keen to investigate the possibilities for exhibiting her paintings, Munsky and Sorge met up. He arranged her first solo exhibition in 1968. It opened in February of that year at the "Künstlerselbsthilfegalerie" (''loosely, "Artists' Self-help gallery"'') at Großgörschen 35 where back in 1964 Sorge, already a successful young graphic artist, had been a founding member of the "Großgörschen exhibition community". The Großgörschen gallery occupied one floor of a former factory building in Berlin-Schöneberg. The artists of the so-called "Großgörschen group", who later became known as the "New Realists", held a generally sceptical attitude towards societal conventions, and drew inspiration from artists such as
George Grosz George Grosz (; ; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Obj ...
,
Hannah Höch Hannah Höch (; 1 November 1889 – 31 May 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar Republic, Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of collag ...
and
John Heartfield John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. Heartfield a ...
, along with the
collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...
creators and
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...
ism. Maina-Miriam Munsky and Peter Sorge married one another in 1970. That same year Munsky became a member of the German Artists' Association (''"Deutscher Künstlerbund"''): she exhibited at the associations' annual exhibitions till 1984. The couple's son, Daniel Ben Sorge, was born in December 1972.Frank Nicolaus: Zuspruch und Kritik in Rufweite wissen. Art-Serie Künstlerpaare. Peter Sorge und Maina-Miriam Munsky, in:
art – Das Kunstmagazin ''Art – Das Kunstmagazin'' is a monthly art magazine founded by Wolf Uecker and first published by Gruner + Jahr in 1979. Its original editor-in-chief, Axel Hecht, was replaced by Tim Sommer in 2005. The magazine features both new and estab ...
, Nr. 9/September 1986, pp. 76–85.


The young artist

Munsky was one of the founding members of the Berlin Aspect Group (''"Gruppe Aspekt"'') which existed between 1972 and 1978. Some of the other more prominent members included the artists
Hermann Albert Hermann or Herrmann may refer to: * Hermann (name), list of people with this name * Arminius, chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe in the 1st century, known as Hermann in the German language * Éditions Hermann, French publisher * Hermann, Mis ...
,
Bettina von Arnim Bettina von Arnim (born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano; 4 April 178520 January 1859) was a German writer and novelist. Bettina (or Bettine) Brentano was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, patr ...
, Ulrich Baehr, Hans-Jürgen Diehl, Arwed Gorella, Wolfgang Petrick, Joachim Schmettau and Klaus Vogelgesang, as well as her husband. During the 1970s she had her first museum sales. The
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
and the German Federal Republic Art Collection each acquired a work by Munsky. In a newspaper piece dated 2 May 1975 the art historian Katrin Sello wrote, "It is no criticism of the impersonal objectivity of modern gynecology, even if Maina-Miriam Munsky is included among the 'Critical Realists' in Berlin, and belongs to the 'Aspect Group'. The pictures provoke for quite other reasons. By setting before the viewer the real birth process without sublimation into idyll or mythology, they violate taboos and mobilise the total resistance of those confronted by them, forcing the viewer to turn away and abruptly reject what is before him or her, because of the way they stir up a traumatic frontier".


"Women Artists International Exhibition 1877-1977"

Controversially, Maina-Miriam Munsky was excluded from taking part in the "Women Artists International Exhibition 1877-1977" (''"Künstlerinnen international 1877-1977"'') held in the orangery at the
Charlottenburg Palace Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace) is a Baroque palace in Berlin, located in Charlottenburg, a district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough, and is among the largest palaces in the world. The palace was built at the end of th ...
. The "Women Artists International" was widely seen as the most important exhibition of women's art to date. Five hundred works by 190 female artists were on display: those who featured included
Louise Nevelson Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, ...
,
Paula Modersohn-Becker Paula Modersohn-Becker (8 February 1876 – 20 November 1907) was a German Expressionist painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is noted for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portraits. She is conside ...
,
Méret Oppenheim Meret (or Méret) Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer. Early life Meret Oppenheim was born on 6 October 1913 in Berlin. She was named after Meretlein, a wild c ...
,
Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 March 6, 1986) was an American Modernism, modernist painter and drafter, draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "M ...
,
Eva Hesse Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...
,
Bridget Riley Bridget Louise Riley (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France. Early life and education Riley was born on 24 April 1931 in West Norwood, No ...
,
Käthe Kollwitz Käthe Kollwitz ( born Schmidt; 8 July 186722 April 1945) was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including ''The Weavers'' and ''The Peasa ...
,
Sonia Delaunay Sonia Delaunay (; 14 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist born to Jewish parents, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine, and was formally trained in Russia and Germany, be ...
and
Gabriele Münter Gabriele Münter (19 February 1877 – 19 May 1962) was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding mem ...
. The jury members came from the New Society for Visual Arts which had been founded in 1969. They were all women. They justified the decision to exclude Maina-Miriam Munsky with the argument that the uninvolved presentation of her birth pictures was "unwomanly" (''"nicht weiblich"''). Separately they accused the artist of being involved with the sexist pictures produced by her artist husband, Peter Sorge, whose drawings combined photographs from pornographic magazines with scenes of violence. During the early 1970s Munsky had seemed to distance herself from the rising tide of feminist solidarity. Asked about her position as a woman in the world of art she repeatedly and very publicly spoke out against women's groups closing ranks in ways that only created new structures of isolation. One reason that the exclusion of Munsky's work from the "Women Artists International" became so contentious was the last minute nature of the decision. Her contribution had already been commissioned: the exhibition jury decided to remove it just before the exhibition catalogue was finalised for the printers. In an interview with Prof. Dr. Cäcilia Rentmeister which was publisher in March 1977 Munsky was uncompromisingly supportive of the
women's movement The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by inequality between men and women. Such issues are women's ...
: : "I have always taken a deep interest in these women's movement groups that were supportive in the abortion debate. About that I always thought to myself: hey, that's exactly what you want, why not go along with it? But there was also always the fear, dear God, of something else eating you up. And then that is one thing - or with the child two things - eating you up. But I certainly think the women's movement important, and I also believe that for our generation it is something that in the time left to us deserves to be supported, here, there and everywhere".


Career progression

Between 1979 and 1981 the itinerant exhibition "feministische kunst internationaal" (''"feminist art international"'') took place in museums in the
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
: several Munsky painting were included. Recognition of Munsky in arts circles reached a high-point in 1982 when her six part set, "The Red Cloth" was exhibited alongside works by
Frida Kahlo Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by Culture of Mexico, the country' ...
and
Tina Modotti Tina Modotti (born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini, August 16/17, 1896 – January 5, 1942) was an Italian American photographer, model, actor, and revolutionary political activist for the Comintern. She left her native Italy in 1913 a ...
at an exhibition held at the
Kunstverein Kunstverein may refer to: Germany * , an art association, founded in 1986 in Aachen * Kunstverein Arnsberg, an association for contemporary art in Arnsberg * , an art association in Karlsruhe * , an art society which operates the Kunsthalle Bremen ...
in
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 ...
. Between 1982 and 1984 she had a guest professorship for basic arts teaching at the Braunschweig University of Art (''"Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig"'' / HBK) in
Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( ; from Low German , local dialect: ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...
. In 1984 she received the Lower Saxony Arts Prize. In 1988 she held a guest professorship at the Pentiment International Summer Academy of the
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences The Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (German: Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg) is a higher education and applied research institution located in Hamburg, Germany. Formerly known as ''Fachhochschule Hamburg,'' the ''Hamburg ...
. In 1990 she became a member of the Künstlersonderbund (artists' league), a somewhat alternative organisation that emerged that year as a breakaway movement from the German Artists' Association (''"Deutscher Künstlerbund"''). Further teaching assignments followed.


Death

Maina-Miriam Munsky was just 56 when she died in 1999 as a result of her alcohol intake. Peter Sorge died three months later. Their bodies share a grave at the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof (churchyard) in Berlin-Schöneberg. In 2013 a first inventory of Munsky's work was compiled by Jan Schüler and published under the title "Die Angst wegmalen" (''loosely, "Paint away the worry"'') by the Berlin-based Poll Art Fountation, who had represented the artist while she was alive.


Works

Along with people such as Peter Sorge, Klaus Vogelgesang, Wolfgang Petrick and Ulrich Baehr, Maina-Miriam Munsky represented the artists of Critical realism which emerged as an artistic movement in
West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...
at the end of the 1960s. It is true these artists did not adhere to any fixed programme, but there were nevertheless things that they shared in common beyond simply an aspiration to interpret realism. They identified the need to differentiate their approach from American
Photorealism Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can b ...
and
Hyperrealism Hyperreality is a concept in post-structuralism that refers to the process of the evolution of notions of reality, leading to a cultural state of confusion between signs and symbols invented to stand in for reality, and direct perceptions of ...
, and dubious claims to reflect political experience in artistic work. Munsky prepared her works by creating from which she then transferred to canvas with the help of a
Slide projector A slide projector is an optical device for projecting enlarged images of photographic slides onto a screen. Many projectors have mechanical arrangements to show a series of slides loaded into a special tray sequentially. 35 mm slide p ...
. She was indeed not a
photorealist Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another Medium (arts), medium. Although ...
in the usual sense, but oriented herself towards "new reality", applying a "verismo" approach that referenced the 1920s. In her pictures she rearranges the patterns and adapted the overall image by reducing it to essentials and applying a rigidly structured composition. Often her backgrounds use a monochrome presentation so that the viewer will not be distracted from the main subject matter. Her artistic themes revolved around conditions and processes such as pregnancy, birth, surgical operations and death. In pieces such as "Emancipation" and "Twins I and II" she features clinical spaces and medical equipment. She became known through her social-psychological presentations in these subject areas. She impressively "documented" with sober precision the potential for photorealism from the delivery room. Munsky started producing pictures of births in 1967, which violated a taboo and met with resistance. She painted these early depictions of embryos, bodily hints, photographs and birth scenes applying a soft flowing style captured in lattice-structures, scaffolds, cages and lines. Her works from this period sometimes recall the surrealist forms from the pictures of
Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
or the works of
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
. In 1970, after undergoing an appropriate vetting process by a commission, she was permitted to spend nine months with the gynaecologist Erich Saling at the Gynaecological Clinic in Berlin-Neukölln. She was able to work in the delivery room, photographing during births and birth-related operations.Rolf Brockschmidt: Chronistin der modernen Klinik. Für die Malerin Maina-Miriam Munsky steht der Mensch im Mittelpunkt. (Gesichter der Großstadt). In: Der Tagesspiegel, Nr. 11487, 10 July 1983, p. 39. After that her pictures acquired a more concrete and stronger form, while the situations they depicted became more readily recognisable. It was more than twenty years after embarking on her pictures themed on births and operations that she moved away from those topics. In 1989 she painted a series of pictures of sombre and unoccupied rooms, along with views out through faint window panes and house fronts.


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References


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Munsky, Maina-Miriam 1943 births 1999 deaths People from Wolfenbüttel German draughtsmen German women artists Artists from Berlin Berlin University of the Arts alumni