Schönebeck, Eugen

Eugen Schönebeck is among Germany’s most important representational painters in the second half of the 20th century. He initially studied painting at the Master School of Applied Arts in East Berlin from 1954 to 1961 and, later, at the College of Fine Arts in West Berlin, under Hans Jaenisch and Hans Kuhn. He and his friend Georg Baselitz wrote the Pandemonic Manifestos in 1961/62, in which they criticised the world of art for being bourgeois and oversaturated. In his paintings, which can be described as Social Realism, Schönebeck focuses on traumatic experiences during the Second World War. He often showed dead or suffering bodies, e.g. in his crucifixion scenes, which were inspired by Francis Bacon, and in his key painting “The True Man” (1964). His large-format portraits of isolated figures, set against a monochrome background, illustrate the artist’s profound interest in the human face behind the political icon (his series “Heroes of the East”, including “Red Army Soldier” and portraits of Communist politicians such as Leo Trotsky and Mao Zedong, 1965). His ink drawings are hybrids of human beings and animals. Many of his graphic art, too, is about death. Schönebeck stopped painting in 1967 and withdrew from the art business altogether. However, his extensive oeuvre continues to be displayed at exhibitions and collections throughout the world. He was represented at documenta 6 in Kassel and at the Venice Biennial in 1990. In 1992, he was awarded the Fred Thieler Prize for Painting. In 2011, a major retrospective was dedicated to him by Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt.