THE FEMALE PRINCIPLE – Bernhard Heiliger and Vadim Sidur

Bernhard Heiliger, »Two figures in relationship I«, 1953, Berlin, Bernhard Heiliger Foundation. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023. Vadim Sidur, »The female principle« (cycle), 1965, Berlin, Karl Eimermacher Collection

Two post-war artists strove for freedom of expression: Bernhard Heiliger (Germany), who, at the rise of defamation against formalism, moved from the Soviet sector to the American, and Vadim Sidur (USSR), who was banned from exhibiting in his homeland after his very first show and soon even restricted from travelling abroad. Today, well-known pieces by both of them can be seen, among others, in Berlin-Charlottenburg: Flame (1962/63) by Heiliger in Ernst-Reuter-Platz and Treblinka (1979) by Sidur in Amtsgerichtsplatz.

The exhibition in Heiliger’s former studio at Kunsthaus Dahlem, entitled after one of Sidur’s most significant cycles, in its turn, presents sculptural models created by Heiliger and Sidur in different decades, focusing on the methods of constructing images of the body. Being directly dependent on the cultural and individual experiences of the artists, those methods have changed over time. Thus, the project is intended to demonstrate the reflection of the changing reality and the relationship of the sculptors with it, contained in the female images as a symbolic “fundamental principle” of existence.

Curator: Yevheniia Havrylenko (UKRAINE Funding Line of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation and the HERMANN REEMTSMA STIFTUNG)
Co-curator: David Ludwig