Maina-Miriam Munsky

Maina-Miriam Munsky (born Meina Munsky: 24 September 1943 - 26 October 1999) was a German New Realist artist. She came to prominence in West Berlin during the 1970s with a series of "larger than life" ("großformatige") paintings of births, abortions and surgical procedures.

Biography Provenance and early years Meina Munsky was born the second of her parents' two daughters in Wolfenbüttel at the height of the Second World War. Oskar Munsky (1910-1945 or 1947), her father, was a young architect who had studied with Hans Poelzig and worked during the 1930s on several high-profile public projects such as the Reichswerke Hermann Göring (industrial complex) and the rebuild of the Olypmpia Stadium underground station. He died, probably in a prisoner, of war camp when his daughter was an infant. Her mother, Gertrud Schmidt (1912-1986), worked as a photographer. Maina Munsky concluded her own schooling in March 1962 when she left the Anna-Vorwerk-Oberschule (as her secondary school was known at that time) with a Realschulabschluss (middle-school course completion certificate). For the next three years she studied with the artist Peter Voigt at the Braunschweig University of Art ("Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig" / HBK). The experience can be seen as having triggered a subsequent artistic theme. Supported by a bursary, from 1964 till 1967 she continued her studies at the Fine Arts Academy in Florence. She studied with Ugo Capocchini and emerged with an Italian qualification as a primary school teacher.

The young artist

Munsky was one of the founding members of the Berlin Aspect Group ("Gruppe Aspekt") which existed between 1972 and 1978. Some of the other more prominent members included the artists Hermann Albert, Bettina von Arnim, , Hans-Jürgen Diehl, Arwed Gorella, Wolfgang Petrick, Joachim Schmettau and Klaus Vogelgesang, as well as her husband. During the 1970s she had her first museum sales. The Museum of Modern Art and the German Federal Republic Art Collection each acquired a work by Munsky. In a newspaper piece dated 2 May 1975 the art historian Katrin Sello wrote, "It is no criticism of the impersonal objectivity of modern gynecology, even if Maina-Miriam Munsky is included among the 'Critical Realists' in Berlin, and belongs to the 'Aspect Group'. The pictures provoke for quite other reasons. By setting before the viewer the real birth process without sublimation into idyll or mythology, they violate taboos and mobilise the total resistance of those confronted by them, forcing the viewer to turn away and abruptly reject what is before him or her, because of the way they stir up a traumatic frontier".

"Women Artists International Exhibition 1877-1977" Controversially, Maina-Miriam Munsky was excluded from taking part in the "Women Artists International Exhibition 1877-1977" ("Künstlerinnen international 1877-1977") held in the orangery at the Charlottenburg Palace. The "Women Artists International" was widely seen as the most important exhibition of women's art to date. Five hundred works by 190 female artists were on display: those who featured included Louise Nevelson, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Méret Oppenheim, Georgia O'Keeffe, Eva Hesse, Bridget Riley, Käthe Kollwitz, Sonia Delaunay and Gabriele Münter. The jury members came from the New Society for Visual Arts which had been founded in 1969. They were all women. They justified the decision to exclude Maina-Miriam Munsky with the argument that the uninvolved presentation of her birth pictures was "unwomanly" ("nicht weiblich"). Separately they accused the artist of being involved with the sexist pictures produced by her artist husband, Peter Sorge, whose drawings combined photographs from pornographic magazines with scenes of violence.

"I have always taken a deep interest in these women's movement groups that were supportive in the abortion debate. About that I always thought to myself: hey, that's exactly what you want, why not go along with it? But there was also always the fear, dear God, of something else eating you up. And then that is one thing - or with the child two things - eating you up. But I certainly think the women's movement important, and I also believe that for our generation it is something that in the time left to us deserves to be supported, here, there and everywhere".

Recognition of Munsky in arts circles reached a high-point in 1982 when her six part set, "The Red Cloth" was exhibited alongside works by Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti at an exhibition held at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. Between 1982 and 1984 she had a guest professorship for basic arts teaching at the Braunschweig University of Art ("Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig" / HBK) in Braunschweig. In 1990 she became a member of the Künstlersonderbund (artists' league), a somewhat alternative organisation that emerged that year as a breakaway movement from the German Artists' Association ("Deutscher Künstlerbund"). Further teaching assignments followed.

Death

Maina-Miriam Munsky was just 56 when she died in 1999 as a result of her alcohol intake.

Munsky prepared her works by creating from which she then transferred to canvas with the help of a Slide projector. She was indeed not a photorealist in the usual sense, but oriented herself towards "new reality", applying a "verismo" approach that referenced the 1920s. In her pictures she rearranges the patterns and adapted the overall image by reducing it to essentials and applying a rigidly structured composition. Often her backgrounds use a monochrome presentation so that the viewer will not be distracted from the main subject matter. After that her pictures acquired a more concrete and stronger form, while the situations they depicted became more readily recognisable. It was more than twenty years after embarking on her pictures themed on births and operations that she moved away from those topics. In 1989 she painted a series of pictures of sombre and unoccupied rooms, along with views out through faint window panes and house fronts.