Commissioned work, artist's book on the poem "In the Sign of the Turtle" by Berthold Brecht, 20 pages plus title page, on aluminum-coated panels. The work is in a metal box (32 x 22 x 6.5 cm), lined with gray felt (manual binding, master Olaf Nie, Weßling). The artist studied painting and graphics at the Stuttgart and Munich Art Academy (Prof. Sonderborg/Prof. Fruhtrunk). She works with wood, linoleum and paper cuts, but also with shadow theater and on artist's books (e.g. Neruda, Rilke, Hölderlin and Joyce). She did not create - in my opinion either - an illustration for the poem, but rather transferred it ingeniously to the present day of the civil war in Syria. Her collages also incorporate ancient works of art from the National Museum in Damascus, e.g. the seated image of a god (14th - 13th century BC), the head of a praying statuette (around 2650 BC) or a naked goddess from the same period; but also the poem "Lebensalter" (1803) by Hölderlin, beginning with "You cities of the Euphrates! You streets of Palmyra!" In several conversations about this project, I had said that as a young man I had crossed the desert from Baghdad to Damascus and visited Palmyra. By grappling intensively with the subject matter, she achieved a great success. This work is one of the best objects in my collection. The photographer of the entire cassette (10 pages of which can be seen) is Christoph Knoch, a freelancer with a focus on architecture, art and reportage photography. There is also a film about this project (found in the "Media" category) by the video artist Ulrich Fischer, with a conversation between Ms. Oberbeck and me, including a reading of the poem by the actress Jovita Dermota. Brecht, who had fled through several countries under great pressure in 1933, wrote the rather little-known poem in 1943 in the USA (text reprint and very interesting historical background by Lutz Prauser, see Internet "Testudowelt, Im Zeichen der Schildkröte, 25.1.2012" (a turtle became the secret symbol of resistance). [hint: this is an automatic translation from German]   |   Category: Art books   |   Material: Metall   |   Country of origin: Bavaria, Germany   |   Artist: Gisela Oberbeck | Detailpage | Similar pieces