Weimar 01-36 (galleryview)
oil on Belgian linen
each 24 x 30 cm (9,5 x 11,8 inches)
Weimar 10 (Uziel Gal – Israeli firearm designer)
oil on Belgian linen
24 x 30 cm (9,5 x 11,8 inches)
Weimar 07 (Marlene Dietrich – German- American singer)
oil on Belgian linen
24 x 30 cm (9,5 x 11,8 inches)
Weimar 14 (Walter Gropius – German-American architect)
oil on Belgian linen
24 x 30 cm (9,5 x 11,8 inches)
Weimar 13 (Harry Graf Kessler – Anglo-German diplomat)
oil on canvas
24 x 30 cm (9,5 x 11,8 inches)
Weimar 01 - 36
Weimar 01 (Anni Albers – German-American textile artist)
Weimar 02 (Josef Albers – German-American artist)
Weimar 03 (Johann Sebastian Bach – German composer)
Weimar 04 (Max Beckmann – German painter, printmaker)
Weimar 05 (Marianne Brandt – German Bauhaus artist)
Weimar 06 (Lucas Cranach the Older – German painter)
Weimar 07 (Marlene Dietrich – German- American singer)
Weimar 08 (Friedrich Ebert – former President of Germany)
Weimar 09 (Lyonel Feininger – German-American painter)
Weimar 10 (Uziel Gal – Israeli firearm designer)
Weimar 11 (Emma Göring – wife of Hermann Göring)
Weimar 12 (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – German writer)
Weimar 13 (Harry Graf Kessler – Anglo-German diplomat)
Weimar 14 (Walter Gropius – German-American architect)
Weimar 15 (Carl Haussknecht – German botanic)
Weimar 16 (Johann G. Herder – German philosopher)
Weimar 17 (Johann N. Hummel – Austrian composer)
Weimar 18 (Johannes Itten – Swiss painter, art educator)
Weimar 19 (Leon Jouhaux – French trade unionist)
Weimar 20 (Wassily Kandinsky – Russian painter)
Weimar 21 (Andrej Kartapolow – Russian politician)
Weimar 22 (Ilse Koch – German war criminal)
Weimar 23 (Paul Klee – Swiss-German painter)
Weimar 24 (Serhii Kulchytskyi – Ukranian mayor general)
Weimar 25 (Franz Liszt – Hungarian composer and pianist)
Weimar 26 (Georges Mandel – French politician)
Weimar 27 (Friedrich Nietzsche – German philosopher)
Weimar 28 (Maria Pawlovna – grand duchess of Russia)
Weimar 29 (Fritz Sauckel – German Nazi politician)
Weimar 30 (Friedrich Schiller – German poet, philisopher)
Weimar 31 (Paul Schneider – Prussian pastor)
Weimar 32 (Johanna Schopenhauer – German writer)
Weimar 33 (Rudolf Steiner – Austrian anthroposoph)
Weimar 34 (Richard Strauss – Austrian composer)
Weimar 35 (Henry van de Velde – Belgian architect, artist)
Weimar 36 (Carl Zeiss – German optician)
The series comprises 36 near-monochrome portrait studies, each executed in uniform grisaille, suggesting the detached austerity of a death mask. The human figures depicted range across nearly three centuries of Weimar’s cultural and political history: artists, philosophers, composers, architects, scientists, politicians, and war criminals. They are presented in an intentional alphabetical alignment. Period detail auch as hairstyles, ornaments and clothing have been rigorously stripped away to foreground the human essence and obfuscate easy identification of era, gender, or moral stance.
This formal reductiveness enacts a canonical structure of equivalence. Each portrait is visually and dimensionally equal within the grid, suggesting an archival system rather than individual commemoration. Yet it is precisely in the inclusion of perpetrators, that this system provokes reflection: individual identity and historical morality are deliberately destabilized. The viewer is compelled to ask: if presented with only facial structure and neutral tone, could one name the criminal? Might a war criminal appear more benign than an artist?
The series functions as an indexical archive of Weimar’s complex legacy, a document of memory. Its neutrality is not absence of judgment, but the condition of critical distance, rendering visible the latent intechangeability of historical presence. The alleged impartiality becomes a space in which ethical and aesthetic judgement must re-emerge.
Technical note:
All portraits are rendered in two transparent pigments: zinc white and Davy’s grey, painted in even layers to allow the linen ground to subtly emerge. The uniform framing and tonal consistency reinforce the archival, death‑mask effect; eyes are aligned, faces dimensionally consistent, gender cues subdued.