Katharina Szelinski-Singer

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Katharina Szelinski-Singer, born as Katharina Singer (born May 24, 1918) in Neusassen, nearby Šilutė (German: Heydekrug), Klaipėda Region), is a German sculptress. She has lived in Berlin since 1945.

Katharina Szelinski-Singer is an accomplished sculptress and studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she was a master student of Richard Scheibe. Shortly after finishing her studies in the middle of the 1950 she was commissioned to do a sculpture for the park "Hasenheide" in Berlin. The sculpture was supposed to be in honour of the German „Trümmerfrauen“ (German for: rubbel women), those woman who after the end of the Second world war played a major role in rebuilding the city by clearing away the rubble of damaged buildings. This limestone-sculpture is up to now her most well-known work in a public place. After several similar but smaller commissions she lived from 1956 till 1986 mainly from doing restoring work at the Charlottenburg Palace.

Katharina Szelinski-Singer is considered to be an outsider of the art scene^[1]: Although following up a different career path she continued to sculpture, but till 1987 her work could only rarely be seen in exhibitions. This changed in 1987/1988, when the Georg-Kolbe-Museum showed her work in a large exhibition dedicated only to her. All in all 45 of her scultpures have been shown there. ^[2]

Her work consists of roughly one hundred sculptures which are without exemption figurative. Almost always she is showing bodies or heads of women; very often they are in the image of herself or are influenced by elements of her own biography. With the sculpture series Köpfe (German for: Heads) she was able to free herself to some extent of the influence of her teacher Richard Scheibe and develop new ways to express herself. This resulted also in a more extensive usage of bronze und gypsum, after she preferred for a long time to work with natural stone. Art experts judge her work to be in line with the so called "Berliner Bildhauerschule" (Berlin sculpter school).

[edit] Notes

[edit] References (exhibition catalogues)

• Katharina Szelinski-Singer: Bildhauerarbeiten. Mit Texten von Ursel Berger und Helmut Börsch-Supan. Hrsg.: Georg-Kolbe-Museum (Ausstellungskatalog), Berlin 1987, 48 Seiten, 33 Abb.
• Katharina Szelinski-Singer: Stein und Bronze. Mit Texten von Wolfgang Schulz. Eine Veröffentlichung der Stiftung Deutschlandhaus, Berlin. 1997, Katalog zur Ausstellung Deutschlandhaus, 19.10. - 14.12. 1997; Meissen, Albrechtsburg 8.2. - 13.4. 1998. 60 S. mit zahlr. Abb., teils farbig.