Sine Hansen at EXILE

Artist: Sine Hansen

Exhibition title: Selected works, 1965-1970

Venue: EXILE, Vienna, Austria

Date: October 21 – December 4, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and EXILE, Berlin

German artist Sine Hansen (1942-2009) leaves a blank for most if not few specialized and deeply art-historically rooted curators, collectors and critics. Yet the artist exhibited in multiple institutional and private exhibitions between 1964 and the late 1970s. Two notable examples are the 1968 exhibition Figurationen at Würtembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, and the 1971 survey exhibition Aktiva 71 at Haus der Kunst, Munich. Judging from these two biographical examples, paired with Hansen’s young age at the time, is it speculative to assume that the artist was emerging as one of the few young, female West-German painters whose voice was – at least – noticed?

When looking at the list of participating artists of both these example exhibition, it becomes evident, that Hansen was indeed the only female artist participating in Figurationen, embedded into an all-male cast of peers, some of whom are now considered to be the foremost luminaries of German postwar art history. This radical gender imbalance wasn’t quite as drastic at the exhibition Aktiva 71, though with a ratio of 118 to 10, we again become confirmed what we already knew. In the mysogynist swamp of 1960s art world, the particular importance of Hansen, having made it that far up the star-studded exclusively male olymp of contemporary painting, should alone speak volumes – before even mentioning a single work of the artist itself.

Hansen was born in 1942 in Iwroclow, Poland. Aged 19, she moved to Braunschweig, Germany to study with Peter Voigt, Johann Georg Geyger and Roland Dörfler at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. Following residencies in Amsterdam and Paris, she returned to Braunschweig and eventually married the artist Jobst Meyer in 1978. Partially due to her private commitments as also through changes within the art world itself, Hansen was not able to continue and progress with her career. In the 1990s, once her private engagements left more time to reconvene with her artistic practice, Hansen was unable to thoroughly re-connect to earlier successes and eventually passed away in 2009.

Since 2009, her works remained in storage, without much interest from institutions or art historians. Her short but significant legacy did not transgress into the digital age and was, until now, at risk of disappearing completely. As a consequence, the internet, as a first source of information, holds very little information. Fortunately, her physical oevre remains largely in good condition and is looked after by the artist’s two daughters.

This introductory exhibition now is the first solo exhibition of the artist’s early works since their original production in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, the exhibition can only be a first attempt and deliberately does not claim to fill in any historical blanks. Instead, this exhibition wants to point to these blanks and encourage research as not to forget another women artist whose rightful place in art history should not need to be claimed. This exhibition is a cordial invitation, reminding of the pressing urgency to revisit and revise art history and combat collective forgetting.

Instead of an explanatory text, the exhibition lets the artist speak for herself by providing a hand-out consisting an artist statement and two articles approved by the artist.