This catalog accompanies the extensive exhibition at the Von der Heydt-Museum – the first retrospective after the early death of the Düsseldorf artist in October 2021.

König worked with everyday objects through sculptural and painterly interventions. The things she found – objects and materials – are starting points for new perspectives that unfold in her art in a sensitive way. By processing and combining them, the artist transforms them into sculptures, object paintings or installations. She works associatively, without predetermined interpretations. Discarded cinema chair backs become masks, a tire becomes a gold-framed flower and the Palestinian scarf becomes a painting surface.

Erinna König, born in Warstein in 1947, studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Dieter Roth and Joseph Beuys and remained in Düsseldorf after completing her studies. In the 1960s and 1970s, when König was a student, the question of whether to work abstractly or representationally was the subject of controversial debate at the academies. Determined to avoid this opposing thinking, she went her own way and developed a complex artistic strategy: she examined both forms and materials for their own sake, but without neglecting motifs and content.