212 - ANNETTE SCHRÖTER

ANNETTE SCHRÖTER (born in 1956 in Meissen, based in Leipzig) Self-Portrait on a Chair, 1989 Oil on hardboard, including a frame designed by the artist, which is to be considered an integral part of the work. 106 x 71.5 cm (115.5 x 81 cm). Signed and dated (19)89 in the lower right corner. Provenance: Private collection, Hesse Annette Schröter studied in Bernhard Heisig’s painting class and later taught as a professor of painting at the Academy of Visual Arts. In 2001, she was awarded the Art Prize of the 8th Leipzig Annual Exhibition. The painter immerses herself in a deep blue-black that scarcely allows for any sense of physicality—the figure becomes a silhouette, almost obliterating its own form. Only the face in profile stands out with a few warmer, almost feverish splashes of color: a brief flash of individuality in a body that otherwise withdraws entirely into darkness and shadow. The light falling into the picture does not come from within, nor from the warmth of the room, but appears as cold, artificial light from outside—like the glow of a streetlamp falling through the window and bathing the yellow area on the left side of the picture in a harsh, almost unreal lemon yellow. A tension arises between this external light and the darkened figure: The painter sits in her own home, on a familiar chair, yet is illuminated by something foreign and impersonal that does not belong to her. Thus, the self-portrait becomes a study of alienation—not self-representation in the sense of making oneself visible, but rather a hiding within one’s own image, a dissolving into darkness, while a cold, indifferent light penetrates from outside and divides the scene into two irreconcilable color worlds.