Between Spendlour of Colour and pain of the soul

Between splendour of colour and pain of the soul
The expressive work of artist Jeane Flieser (1912–2007)

Jeane Flieser was born in Kiel in 1912. In 1918, her parents, the actor Hans Flieser and the trained opera singer Lydia Flieser, née Scheel, moved to Berlin, where Jeane Flieser grew up.

From 1931 to 1936, she studied at the ‘Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandte Kunst’ in Berlin-Charlottenburg. However, it was only after the Second World War that she was able to complete her art studies at the Berlin Art Academy as a master student of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

From 1954 to 1979, the artist lived alternately in Berlin and Kitzeberg. All of her tapestries were created in her Kitzeberg studio; here she had enough space to embroider these large works, including the tapestry St. Florian for the fire station in Kiel from 1962. My studio cottage by the water from 1967 is one of the many watercolours that Jeane Flieser painted of her garden in Kitzeberg. She loved her blooming garden and looked forward to seeing it again every time she came back from Berlin. In the early years, she mainly created oil paintings, flower pictures and landscapes, including figure compositions, in strong colours with an expressionist joy of colour.

For example, Approaching storm from 1968 shows lush vegetation through which a startled black cat leaps. In Berlin, the artist observed young and old people on the street, in cafés and in the underground and documented the contemporary hustle and bustle in drawings and etchings - also with biting humour: Fathers and Sons in the Underground from 1969.

It was only in her later years that the artist began to deal with the years 1933 to 1945, but also with the increasing environmental pollution. She now developed her colour palette into a dark, gloomy colouring. In depressing paintings, the artist worked through the consequences of the Nazi dictatorship that she herself had suffered.

As her father was Jewish and had already been banned from his profession in 1936, she also felt the effects of the racial laws. The family struggled to survive in an allotment garden colony in Berlin. In 1981, she created Untitled I, a still-life-like composition which, among other things, symbolically shows a limp and lifeless coat hanging down with a yellow star and the inscription ‘Jew'.

We would like to thank the Stadtmuseum Berlin, the Stadtkloster Kiel and the private lender for their valuable contributions to our exhibition. A special thanks goes to the Schleswig-Holstein Foundation Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf, which has given us the estate of Jeane Flieser on permanent loan. Their support makes this exhibition possible and enriches the holdings of our museum.

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Opening: Saturday, 21 June, 5 p.m.
(contribution towards expenses: 1 euro)

Exhibition duration: 21 June to 7 September 2025