Introduction
The painter, draughtsman and graphic artist Hubertus Giebe is one of the most important representatives of expressive figurative painting of the younger German post-war generation. With the exhibition ‘Winterreise’ (Winter Journey), whose title may be reminiscent of Wilhelm Müller's darkly poetic journey in Franz Schubert's Winterreise, explores the painter and intellectual's inner, often conflicting view of the world and its interrelationships. Allegorical ‘historical paintings’, nudes, but especially landscapes and still lifes become a visually powerful testimony to inner sensitivities. Hubertus Giebe has developed a visual language for himself, in which he uses the medium of painting to draw on a wealth of motifs. Doll-like, often disturbing figures, Doll-like, mostly disturbing figures, objects and symbols populate the stage-like scenes that the artist arranges as the director of his world theatre. Time and again, dynamic movement and shimmering, luminous colourism encounter dull stagnation and shocking immobility. His kindred spirits are Kokoschka, Dix, Beckmann and Hofer. The main themes of his work are rise and fall, power and powerlessness, violence and suffering of human beings, these infinitely fascinating creatures who are capable of senseless brutality as well as the highest sensitivity. Aside from this Sisyphean task of shaping the ‘image of history’, Hubertus Giebe formulates a no less forceful, no less demanding visual language in classical subjects such as portraits, nudes, landscapes and still lifes, determined by the same expressive style, the same powerful colouring, the same reduction of form and sharpening of contours. Hubertus Giebe's allegorical imagery explores the depths of our humanity, unmasking and questioning our society, like a visual gesture of warning or lament. Above all, however, this painting appeals to our humanity, our humanity. An invaluable, highly topical value that understands the obligation of the individual to the ethical community as the basis of all peaceful, moral and moderate action.
