Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presents most comprehensive European retrospective:

Amsterdam, May 8, 2014 — In September 2014, the Stedelijk Museum is mounting a survey exhibition of Marlene Dumas (Cape Town, 1953). With over 100 drawings and paintings from private and museum collections throughout the world, Marlene Dumas – The Image as Burden is the first major solo exhibition of Dumas in the Netherlands in 20 years. It is also the most comprehensive retrospective survey of the work Dumas has produced in Europe and presents a compelling overview of her oeuvre from the late 1970s to the present.

Marlene Dumas is considered one of the most significant and influential painters working today. Her emotionally charged paintings and drawings address existentialist themes such as eroticism, grief and shame while frequently referencing art-historical motifs and current political issues. With her work, she offers new possibilities to the meaning that painting can still have today, in an era dominated by visual culture.

Dumas often finds inspiration in newspaper and magazine images from her large visual archive. She believes that the endless stream of photographic images bombarding us every day influences how we see each other and the world around us. Dumas addresses this onslaught by revealing the psychological, social, and political aspects of these images.

Leontine Coelewij, curator of the exhibition, says, “The paintings and drawings of Marlene Dumas have an enormous directness and expressiveness, which she couples with a certain analytical distance. In her portraits, Dumas does not shy away from controversial topics. The portraits of Mohammed B., the man who assassinated Dutch film director Theo van Gogh, and Osama Bin Laden evoke a strong response in the viewer. Her work confronts us with the ambiguity of the painterly image. In both her visual work and her writings, Dumas reflects on contemporary painting and what it means to be an artist.”

In addition to her most important and iconic works, the exhibition also presents lesser-known paintings and drawings, including many works never before shown in the Netherlands. Also included is a selection of the artist’s most recent paintings such as The Widow and Nuclear Family, both from 2013.  

The title of the exhibition is derived from Dumas’s work The Image as Burden (1993), which refers to the conflict between the painterly gesture and the illusion of the painted image. Dumas draws a connection between the subject of the painting, a man carrying a woman in his arms, and the painter who carries the weight of her subject. The title also alludes to how an artwork can burden the viewer with its image. Dumas says, “I want to talk about what the painting does to the image, not what the image does to the painting.”

The exhibition devotes special attention to the works on paper that Dumas produced during her early years in the Netherlands, when she also exhibited her work for the first time at the Stedelijk Museum and Museum Fodor (1978-81). Themes such as love, death and longing, and the use of texts and images found in mass media – which are explored in her later paintings – are also evident in these early works.   

The exhibition is curated by Stedelijk curator Leontine Coelewij in close collaboration with the artist and occupies a circuit of about fifteen galleries on the upper floor of the historic building of the Stedelijk Museum. The exhibition covers approximately 1,000 square meters.

Marlene Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa. She came to the Netherlands in the 1970s to study at Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem. On completing her study, Dumas settled in Amsterdam, where she still lives and works. In recent years, Dumas has held important exhibitions in the United States (New York, Houston, and Los Angeles), South Africa, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. Her work is represented in the collections of numerous distinguished museums and private collectors throughout the world. Dumas is the recipient of many prestigious art awards, the most recent being the Johannes Vermeer Prize (2012).

The Stedelijk Museum has had a long relationship with Dumas. Her work was first exhibited at the Stedelijk in 1978, and the museum has since added 39 drawings and paintings to its collection. In 2012, the Stedelijk acquired the controversial portrait Osama (2010). In 2013, the Amsterdam collector and gallery director Paul Andriesse gifted four works on paper by Dumas to the museum.

Marlene Dumas – The Image as Burden is organized by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in collaboration with Tate Modern, London (February 4, 2015 – May 10, 2015) and Foundation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (May 30, 2015 – September 13, 2015).

Catalogue

A special catalogue will be published on the occasion of this unique exhibition, compiled by its three curators: Leontine Coelewij, Kerryn Greenberg (curator, Tate Modern), and Theodora Vischer (curator, Fondation Beyeler). Structured along a strict chronology, the publication traces developments in Dumas’s oeuvre from the 1970s to the present day. The 196-page catalogue also contains writings by the artist, an in-depth interview with Dumas by Theodora Vischer, an essay by Leontine Coelewij, a text by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, and some 200 illustrations. The publication is designed by Dutch designer Roger Willems and published by Tate Publishing. The catalogue is published in three languages: Dutch, English, and German.

Public Program

The retrospective is accompanied by a dynamic program of lectures, gallery talks, and a public interview with the artist. Also included in the exhibition is a documentary about Dumas and the making of the exhibition. Visitors can also enjoy special guided tours, children’s workshops, and a course on Dumas as part of the Stedelijk Academy.

This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of principal benefactor Stichting Ammodo and principal sponsor Rabobank Amsterdam

Note for editors
For more information and visual material, please contact the Stedelijk Museum Press Office, Annematt Ruseler, tel. +31 (0)20 – 573 26 56 / 60 or pressoffice@stedelijk.nl.  

Press images Marlene Dumas