This show provides an in-depth overview of the oeuvre of Else Blankenhorn (1873–1920), the best-known woman artist from the Prinzhorn Collection.

With 135 works depicting various themes, the retrospective, previously presented in Heidelberg, clearly demonstrates the expressive and boldly colorful diversity of Else Blankenhorn’s visual worlds.

Blankenhorn composed and played music, created photographs, wrote, translated, knitted and worked in embroidery before she began drawing and painting in 1908. In spite of her knowledge of Symbolism, Expressionism and Japanese art, she developed her own artistic idiom. The exhibition presents paintings and drawings as well as notebooks and sketchbooks containing poems and compositions. Throughout the show, quotations from Blankenhorn’s journals and notebooks accompany the symbolically charged and visionary universe of her pictures.

One highlight of the acclaimed exhibition are the banknotes she produced for her imaginary husband, Emperor Wilhelm II, who commissioned her to create them in order to finance the resurrection of couples. She believed she had been given this charitable task by Wilhelm II, her “spiritual husband.”

Curator: Ingrid von Beyme

To accompany the special exhibition "Das Gedankenleben ist doch wirklich" from the Prinzhorn Collection in Heidelberg, a publication was published by das Wunderhorn, which is now also available in the museum gugging shop.
Ingrid von Beyme, Thomas Röske (ed.), Else Blankenhorn - Das Gedankenleben ist doch wirklich, 224 pages, hardcover Year of publication: 2022