As a painter and collagist, Sarah Schumann is considered one of the most important exponents of post-war Modernism and engaged themes of “Schrecken und Schönheit” (horror and beauty) in her figurative works.
Historian Vojin Sasa Vukadinović wrote, in the obituary (for Texte zur Kunst), “Sarah Schumann was - there is no other way to put it - a singular phenomenon.” Raised in Berlin, she was ‘self-taught’ by necessity – neither Schumann nor her artist parents could afford tuition for an art academy. As a child refugee, she often experienced hunger, which contributed to health challenges later in life. Nevertheless, by the age of 20, in the early 1950s, Schumann began exhibiting works which ran completely counter to the ideal world of post-war conservatism in West German society. Vukadinovic observed that ‘At a time when no one wanted to be reminded of the recent past, these [shock collages] reminded us in a completely undidactic way that beneath the wafer-thin foundation of civilization lies the incomprehensible.’ These early so-called photographic “Schock-Collagen” (shock collages) reflect her childhood in the Second World War and the experiences of her youth in the post war era.
In 1968, Schumann returned from London and Italy to West Berlin and became very actively involved in the early stages of the new Feminist movement. She joined ‘Bread + Roses (Brot + Rosen),’ a significant feminist artist and activist collective in 1971; then co-curated ‘Women Artists International 1877-1977,’ a landmark feminist survey.
In the mid 1970s, she met the writer Silvia Bovenschen, who became her life partner. ‘Back then, "gay" was still a dirty word, despicable… Being gay was still a crime,’ she explained to curator Franziska Leuthäußer, the founder of Café Deutschland, for an oral history project at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt. Schumann incorporated images of Silvia in significant paintings and gouaches throughout their lives.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Schumann began to paint and create elaborate surrealist mixed-media collages. These ‘collages from the 1970s placed women at the center of the image in order to broaden that very meaning,’ Vukadinovic notes. ‘Flowers, leaves and hair, chiffon, velvet and brocade were integrated into compositions that seemed like a twilight state of reality: Not unlike sensory illusions or incipient dreams, they placed the emphasis on an at times morbidly enraptured femininity, which here remained intangible in the literal sense, almost eliciting its potency in the unconscious.’
For over 60 years (1953 – 2024), Schumann received numerous solo exhibitions throughout Germany, notably in Berlin at KUNSTstätte Dorothea, Galerie Albrecht, and Galerie am Savignyplatz; in London, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/ICA (1962); and throughout Europe. Recently, Schumann was included in Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70 (2023), Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles; and Lesbian Visions (2018), Schwules Museum, Berlin. The artist’s paintings and collages are in the permanent collection of the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Morsbroich Museum, Leverkusen; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), Berlin, and others.
Sarah Schuman, who died in Berlin at the age of 85 in 2019, described herself as ‘a courageous, strong, combative artist.’ In her last interview, which Bettina Böttinger had conducted with her a few months earlier, she explained ‘Beauty alone is not enough.’