{"id":45698,"date":"2026-04-28T14:01:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/?page_id=45698"},"modified":"2026-05-23T18:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T16:06:12","slug":"information-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/en\/exhibitions\/preview\/helma\/information-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Information"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In DREAM AND NIGHTMARE, HELMA\u2019s \u201csurreal worlds\u201d and the \u201cdystopian visions\u201d of her husband Wolfgang Petrick are juxtaposed at Galerie Poll. Wolfgang Petrick was one of the gallery\u2019s artists from the very beginning, whereas HELMA\u2019s work was first presented by the gallery in 2025 in a solo exhibition in Berlin, and as part of the re:discover<\/em> programme at Art Karlsruhe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HELMA\u2019s paintings are deeply connected to surrealism, art brut, and magical realism. They tell of dreams, fairy tales, and visions, evoking a sense of the boundless and the profound. Their beholders encounter snakes coiling around stark branches, or crosses, skulls and flaming wreaths amidst tree roots and ladders stretching skyward. Bounteous blossoms, tangled vines, and thorns, along with hearts, are recurring motifs. Often rendered in vibrant reds and blues, her scenes are executed with obsessive precision in oil. Inner and outer worlds, dream and reality dissolve into paintings of poetic beauty in which menace nevertheless appears to lie in wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In several of her works, HELMA uses works on paper by Wolfgang Petrick as source material, incorporating his motifs into her own compositions. These \u201cjoint works\u201d, together with a portrait of Helma drawn by Wolfgang Petrick \u2013 in which he regards his wife from multiple perspectives while portraying himself as the observer \u2013 serve as a link between the two exhibitions shown concurrently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolfgang Petrick\u2019s work during the 1960s and 1970s is closely tied to the concept of critical realism, an artistic movement that became a defining feature of the West Berlin art scene. In the 1980s, Petrick moved away from this stylistic approach, though he remained deeply engaged with artistic predecessors such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and James Ensor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the decades that followed, Petrick created \u2013 through his paintings, drawings, prints, objects, sculptures, and installations \u2013 a distinctive and at times spatially expansive visual cosmos, drawing on mythological, Christian, art-historical, and scientific sources, as well as on news and pornographic magazines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDesire and suffering, eros and death, tenderness and aggression exist in close proximity as defining forces within his art, which continually revolves around the fragile equilibrium between humanity, nature, and power, confronting the viewer with the tension between emotion and intellect\u201d (Werner Hofmann).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his predominantly large-scale compositions, Petrick interweaves multiple pictorial and media layers through stratification and overlay. He works in thematic cycles and on several pieces simultaneously. Combining oil and acrylic painting with drawing, he collages and assembles materials, photographs the artistic process, digitally reworks the image, prints the digital picture onto canvas, and then paints or draws over it again. The development of a single work may extend over several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biographies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in 1940 as Helma Hartmann in Berlin, HELMA trained as a technical draftswoman between 1959 and 1961. She married artist Wolfgang Petrick in 1964, and her daughter Nina was born in 1965. HELMA began painting in 1974 and adopted her artist name that same year. Wolfgang Petrick (1939\u20132025) studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts (Hochschule der K\u00fcnste Berlin, HdK) with Professor Werner Volkert between 1958 and 1965, while also spending several semesters studying biology at the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin). Together with K. H. H\u00f6dicke, Markus L\u00fcpertz, and others, he co-founded Germany\u2019s first self-help gallery, Gro\u00dfg\u00f6rschen 35<\/em> (1964\u20131968), and later, together with Bettina von Arnim, Peter Sorge, Joachim Schmettau, and others, established the Gruppe Aspekt<\/em> (1972\u20131978). In 1975, he was appointed professor at the HdK, where he taught painting until 2007. He became a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1993. In addition to his studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg, he maintained a studio in New York from 1994 until 2016. Wolfgang Petrick took part in documenta 6<\/em> in Kassel in 1976, and in 1991, his work was shown at the Venice Biennale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collections<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works by HELMA and Wolfgang Petrick are included in distinguished private collections, among them the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection in Berlin and the Jutta and Manfred Heinrich Art Collection in Maulbronn. Petrick\u2019s work is also held in the collections of the Academy of Arts Berlin, the Berlinische Galerie, the Neue Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the German Federal Art Collection, and the Woods Art Institute in Wentorf, where a retrospective of his oeuvre was presented in 2022\u20132023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In DREAM AND NIGHTMARE, HELMA\u2019s \u201csurreal worlds\u201d and the \u201cdystopian visions\u201d of her husband Wolfgang Petrick are juxtaposed at Galerie Poll. Wolfgang Petrick was one of the gallery\u2019s artists from the very beginning, whereas HELMA\u2019s work was first presented by the gallery in 2025 in a solo exhibition in Berlin, and as part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":45688,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"ausstellen-text.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-45698","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45867,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45698\/revisions\/45867"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}