Jutta Koether’s oeuvre was called a large-scale attempt to “create a counternarrative to the canon of modern painting” in the recent exhibition Tour de Madame at the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. In fact, the German artist, who was born in Cologne in 1958 and is now based in New York and Berlin, has significantly shaped the cultural landscape since the 1980s. In addition to her work as a painter, performance artist, and musician, she is also an editor and publisher of the magazine SPEX who has written countless reviews for journals such as Texte zur Kunst.

Koether began painting in the 1980s in the circle of Neoexpressionist artists in Cologne. In this period, after years of Conceptualism, there was a return to painting under the motto “Hungry for Painting” all over the world, in movements such as the Neue Wilde (the New Wild Ones) and Transavanguardia. Similar to the world of painting in general, the development was dominated by men, who often extensively indulged in the trope of the painter. Jutta Koether countered this immediate, violent approach to painting with a complex painterly oeuvre: Gestural brushstrokes and depictions of the female body as well as the lyrical appropriation of poetry and art history linked her to pop-cultural elements. Her move to New York enabled her to expand on the motifs of punk and noise culture, challenging the male dominated canon of art history and adopting motifs from fellow women artists. 

Jutta Koether’s oeuvre has been featured in numerous recent exhibitions, including shows at the Kunsthalle Bern in 2007, Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2011, and the Museum Brandhorst in Munich in 2018. At Villa Flora, Koether will focus on early French modernism, which was appreciated and collected by Hedy and Arthur Hahnloser there after the turn of the century.

Curated by Konrad Bitterli