»Ursula - That's Me. So what?«

She simply called herself Ursula - the artist Ursula Schultze-Bluhm, who was born in Mittenwalde in 1921 and died in 1999, will be occupying the Museum Ludwig in Cologne from March 18. The exhibition Ursula - That's Me. So What? shows 236 works, 44 of them from the museum's own collection. They express Ursula's attitude toward Surrealism as a state of mind. For her efforts to open up new worlds and break down old hierarchies, the Museum Ludwig associates her with artists such as Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Unica Zürn. However, to group their works solely under Surrealism would only do justice to individual aspects. They also touch upon Naive painting or even individual mythology.

Ursula's talent in disguise was also recognized by luminaries such as André Breton and Jean Dubuffet - because the latter was so convinced, he included some of her works in his Musée de l'Art Brut in the 1950s. The Museum Ludwig is full of confidence that Ursula's way of questioning entrenched dualisms such as man/woman and translating transformation processes into a mystical visual language can also inspire a younger generation. Anyone who would like to see the »idiosyncratic pictorial inventions,« which are based on Ursula's leitmotif of Pandora as fantastic mixed creatures in gloomy to brightly colored scenes, has until July 23 to do so.