Eberhard Göschel: Cora + Mabel

The abstract pictures of the painter, graphic artist, draughtsman, action artist and sculptor Eberhard Göschel are characterised by a "tangle of lines on grey clay, a jumble of life or a tangle of wires" (Ekkehard Maaß). The artist, who was born in Bubenreuth, Bavaria, in 1943 and grew up in Königstein, was not really interested in using an artistic medium or expressing a symbolic content. Rather, he was interested in exploring the physicality of painterly expression using different techniques. Göschel's works are always paintings, even if their pictorial bodies are drawn, printed, performative or sculptural.

This artistic interest made Göschel a celebrated artist in his adopted home of Dresden, where he studied painting from 1964 and lived and worked until his death in 2022, but also an artist who was at odds with GDR cultural policy. While still a student, Göschel developed his iconic informal painting, characterised by earthy grey to black colours, with which he continued the Dresden School of Colourism. At the end of the 1960s, Göschel belonged to the circle of artists around the group "Die Lücke", which also included A.R. Penck and Strawalde. Between 1974 and 1978, Göschel headed a working group at the Leonhardi Museum in Dresden and organised exhibitions that were repeatedly monitored by the secret service. in 1978, he founded the legendary Obergrabenpresse in his Dresden studio. From the 1980s onwards, the artist also worked sculpturally, primarily with unglazed ceramics. He created soaring sculptures reminiscent of human figures, whose cracked surfaces, fissured by the firing process, translate Göschel's painting and graphics into a three-dimensional medium.

The two bronze sculptures "Cora" and "Mabel" on Schillerplatz in Chemnitz are also modelled on Göschel's terracottas and reflect his interest in lending painting an independent physicality.

(Text: Alexander Ochs / Ulrike Pennewitz)