Experience Helga Gebert's Art at Between Forms in the GRIMMWELT Kassel
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Between Forms: Helga Gebert's Images Continue to Tell
The exhibition BETWEEN FORMS | HELGA GEBERT at the GRIMMWELT Kassel is dedicated to an artist who translates fairy tales, myths, and personal stories into multifaceted visual worlds. Illustrations here do not merely accompany the text, but exist as independent forms of continuation, resistance, and retelling.
Illustration as a Living Form of Storytelling
Helga Gebert, born in 1935 in Freiburg im Breisgau, significantly shaped the renewal of German children's and youth literature in the 1970s as an illustrator, painter, author, and translator. Her works combine poetic fairy tale motifs with fine pen drawings, watercolor colors, detailed figures, and carefully composed image spaces.
The exhibition demonstrates how Gebert transforms narrative materials from the Children’s and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm, from 1001 Nights, and from her own stories into a distinctive visual language. Characters such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Aladdin, dragons, and genies encounter the audience in new aesthetic contexts.
Between Pen Drawing, Painting, and Fairy Tale World
The viewing of her works leads through a multifaceted oeuvre that spans illustration, painting, and narrative visual art. Fine lines, watercolored areas, ornamental frames, and surprising details create an exhibition atmosphere in which familiar stories transform. Gebert's images open spaces for imagination, cultural understanding, and personal aesthetic experience.
A comparative look at works from the Grimm collection of the city of Kassel, along with works by Maurice Sendak, Helga Ruppert-Tribian, and Markus Lefrançois, makes different artistic approaches to fairy tale illustration visible. The curation combines art historical classification with literary and cultural pedagogical perspectives.
Discoveries for Adults and Children
Interactive elements and a riddle trail for children invite visitors to look more closely, decode figures, and explore the transition between image and word themselves. The exhibition playfully conveys cultural education while simultaneously opening deeper questions: How does an illustration change the perception of a story? What posture, facial expression, or detail shapes our imagination of a fairy tale character?
Biographical insights make the artist's working methodology understandable. An accompanying exhibition catalog with numerous illustrations and contributions from literary studies, aesthetic education, and art and cultural sciences deepens the engagement with Helga Gebert's life's work.
Conclusion: An Artistic Experience between Image and Word
BETWEEN FORMS | HELGA GEBERT promises a sensual and insightful artistic experience for families, fairy tale lovers, and art-interested adults. The exhibition shows how illustrations preserve cultural memories, revive narratives, and create original visual stories. A visit to the GRIMMWELT Kassel enriches the viewing of the works with immediate spatial effects, originals, and the special power of the gaze.
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