Gottfried Bräunling

*1947 in Radebeul (Saxony), Germany

One of the central Dresden artists of divided Germany

Gottfried Bräunling is one of the central figures of the Dresden group of painters around Ralf Winkler alias A.R. Penck in the 1970s. In addition to drawings, screen printing, etchings and paintings, his multifaceted oeuvre also includes three-dimensional works made of wood, bronze and iron. Gottfried Bräunling’s painterly, graphic and sculptural work was mostly formed in an interplay of “separation” and “encounter”. Hidden beneath this is a deep need for harmony.

Gottfried Bräunling and Penck shared a lifelong friendship and a similar fate. Both were classified as politically unpleasant and ultimately forcibly expatriated to the West because of their system-critical painting. This friendship and collaboration manifested itself in many joint works and projects around questions of artistic freedom without compromise, exhibition bans and political discourses.

Biography

After studying at the HfbK Dresden (graphics and painting), Bräunling became friends with the painters E. von der Erde, Ralf Winkler alias A.R. Penck and Wolfgang Opitz and was temporarily a member of the artist group “Lücke”. From the mid-1970s, Bräunling was one of those intellectuals who had accepted and supported the society of real existing socialism as an experiment. However, these same intellectuals came into conflict with the state, whereupon Bräunling was restricted by the GDR officials and refused admission to the artists’ association. This resulted in a ban on exhibitions and sales.

During these years, many relevant and system-critical works were created, which ultimately led to his escape to West Berlin in 1987: “I had to become more critical. And the more I thought about it, the more problems arose. Again and again. If you opened your mouth, named your problem, you had to take a stand, head-on. And under certain circumstances it could also become “fatal” there…” – Gottfried Bräunling. After his arrival in West Berlin, he was warmly welcomed by Penck. Bräunling founded Edition GB, and bibliophile artist books were created with Jannis Ritsos, Asteris and Ina Kutulas, A.R. Penck, Mikis Theodorakis, Odisseas Elytis and Giorgos Seferis. Greek mythology became the focus of his work.

For a while, Bräunling lived in A.R. Penck’s artist community in Heimbach in the Eifel. From around 1990, with Penck’s help, Bräunling founded a screen printing workshop and a steel cutting studio in the southern Palatinate village of Relsberg and combined a house, studio and workshops in an old farm. In addition to his own work, many prints and works by A.R. Penck were created here.

Gottfried Bräunling traveled to Ireland, Cyprus, Greece and Thailand for work stays and showed his paintings in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad: in Hamburg, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Paris, Athens and New York, among others.

The stay in China impressed the artist so much that he set up another studio and home in Zhongshan. In 2018, his paintings were on display at the Museum of Art in Zhongshan in China, and two further exhibitions in Chinese museums followed.