Two girls in colorful dresses stand upright against gray-brown house walls, holding hands and gazing seriously from the canvas. They appear older than their years, almost like adults. This is "Turkish Girls," a 1983 oil painting by Berlin artist Evelyn Kuwertz, currently displayed at the Ephraim Palace Museum. The work, though somewhat hidden in what's called a "free space" within the city history collection, belongs to a special exhibition about Berlin courtyards.
Kuwertz had discovered the children by chance in a courtyard on Oranienstraße, according to the text accompanying the painting. She had asked permission to photograph them, partly because they reminded her of her own post-war childhood when her family, having moved from Styria to Berlin, was perceived as foreign. Perhaps this is what creates the magic of Kuwertz's Berlin paintings - they always tell stories about the artist herself and her relationship with her city.
In her studio in Berlin-Tempelhof, housed in an artists' building run by the BBK (Association of Visual Artists), Kuwertz has positioned another significant work in the center of the room for visitors. "Gleisdreieck Station, 1979," painted in oil and acrylic on canvas, depicts a subway car on the U1 line. In the foreground sits a gentleman with dark hair and mustache, concentrating on reading a newspaper, while across from him a lady with a headscarf clutches her handbag. Other isolated city dwellers populate the scene.
Kuwertz is currently organizing her extensive body of work, hoping to create a comprehensive catalog. Her works are rarely exhibited, even in Berlin, making a visit to the Ephraim Palace highly recommended to see not only her piece but the entire exhibition "Berlin Courtyards - Between Daily Life, Work and Encounter." In 2026, the Gallery in Körnerpark will present Kuwertz's feminist engagement in a group exhibition, providing another opportunity to engage with her work, which has somewhat faded from public attention.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Kuwertz primarily painted West Berlin's U-Bahn, East Berlin's S-Bahn, and various stations in the style of critical realism. She captured Schöneberg S-Bahn station with light filtering through dim, partially broken glass windows, along with fluttering pigeons, young women climbing stairs, people waiting on platforms, and self-portraits. Later, other urban structures captured her interest, particularly bunkers - the high-rise bunker on Pallasstraße and the atomic bunker on Uhlandstraße beneath the Kudamm-Karree. She painted people touring these spaces, grouped within the massive architecture.
Kuwertz consistently chose locations loaded with meaning: the Oberbaum Bridge between East and West Berlin, and the Landwehr Canal where Rosa Luxemburg was murdered. "It's also about the associations that a place triggers," Kuwertz explains. "I don't just reproduce it, but interpret it, emotionally as well." This represents a painter's perspective on her city and on herself within that city.
After German reunification, she was drawn to the east. One of her first paintings from that period shows Potsdamer Platz photographed from above from a high-rise building - a no-man's land captured in tempera and oil on canvas. Between 1992 and 1995, she created a four-part painting of the construction site that spread across the area. High cranes surrounded by water with the skyline in the background fascinated her, particularly how construction work had suddenly created a lake when groundwater shot into the building excavations.
Other paintings from this period show the reconstruction of Hotel Adlon, the gutting of entire streets, and the city's transformation. For this, Kuwertz developed her own form of expression: she tilted facades and laid them like semi-transparent layers in front. "That was my interpretation of the change in Berlin Mitte," she explains. In her square studio space in Tempelhof, which she occupied only a few years ago, her works and the eras they represent overlap, creating a potentially nostalgic view of Berlin's past, especially as the city once again undergoes rapid transformation.
"My environment has always had a direct influence on me," the artist explains. "Either it affects me or it doesn't. When a situation remains in memory, I start sketching and a picture idea develops, becomes more comprehensive and leads to a larger work, often to several paintings." Berlin was Kuwertz's dominant theme for a long time, though today she finds nothing new to say about her city. She has, after all, done a great deal. Berlin was her sphere of influence, not only as a painter: "Berlin shaped me, but I also shaped Berlin."
What she means relates to the perception and representation of women in art, and what it means to be both an artist and a feminist. Born in Austria in 1945 but raised in West Berlin as the daughter of a worker and a mechanic, an artistic career seemed beyond reach. She first trained as a medical-technical assistant and worked in that profession for four years before applying to and being accepted at the University of the Arts in 1969, during the time of the student movement.
She was already politicized, she says, and didn't want to study under just anyone. "We wanted a free class," she recalls, referring to herself, her friend and fellow student Antonia Wernery, and six classmates. Hermann Bachmann, whose master student she later became, was the only professor who supported them at the time, though this project didn't work out. Only with Georg Kiefer, who lectured at the university as a guest lecturer on project work, did possibilities open up. Brigitte Mauch, who studied exhibition design, joined Kuwertz and Wernery.
In their project, the three created an environment with large picture panels titled "On the Situation of Women in Family and Society." They examined stereotypical representations of women in media and everyday sexism, categorized according to roles as mother, wife, sex object, and housewife, implemented visually through various techniques including screen printing, collages, and drawings. "After initial mistrust, we were respected by the professors. We also worked incredibly hard," Kuwertz recalls. They had the largest room available, big enough to practice karate in between work sessions.
An exhibition was planned for 1973 at the Landesbildstelle, but shortly before opening, it was banned by the then-Berlin SPD Education Senator Gerd Löffler due to moral concerns. He took offense at the depiction of marital rape, which was legal at the time. As a replacement, they set up the exhibition for one day at the HdK - a scandal. Even later, the panels were never exhibited institutionally. "It was frustrating. We were very young and inexperienced. We couldn't market it like a Baselitz when his 'Big Night Down the Drain' was banned. We weren't that clever," she admits. Fortunately, she kept everything, and part of it will be shown at the Gallery in Körnerpark more than 50 years later.
In 1977, another exhibition project followed that managed to open despite obstacles. Together with Renate Gerhardt and Sarah Schumann, Kuwertz had searched for forgotten women in art history, both historical and contemporary. "Women Artists International 1877-1977" was an NGbK project, but it took two attempts to get the proposal approved. Male members found the idea too apolitical and irrelevant: "It was like at the university, the men didn't perceive it at all." Kuwertz and her collaborators mobilized women who joined NGbK specifically for the vote. The exhibition showed 182 female artists - only women, which was new at the time. "We were the first in Germany to show Frida Kahlo," Kuwertz says with pride and some defiance.
They faced opposition from all sides, with Kuwertz speaking of "reprimands." They only heard about what was missing, she says: "When you consider what resources we had available, how small the group of women was who developed this project, it was basically madness." In the 1980s, Kuwertz was among the co-initiators of the Hidden Museum, which researched works by female artists in Berlin museum collections. No one had dealt with this before either. Unfortunately, this must be remembered again: since 2022, the museum has had no location. It was taken over by the Berlinische Galerie, but nothing has been heard from it since.
