Gertrude Degenhardt (born 1 October 1940) is a German artist, especially a lithographer and illustrator, based in Mainz. She is known for illustrating the texts and albums of Franz Josef Degenhardt and of other political writers and singers including François Villon, Liam O'Flaherty, Bertolt Brecht, and Wolf Biermann. In the 1990s, she turned to topics around women, portraying them in art books such Women in Music, Vagabondage in Blue, and Vagabondage en Rouge.
Early life, education, and family
She was born in New York City to German parents and grew up in Berlin from age two. Her childhood was marked by the Nazi regime, bombings, and the difficult time after World War II. Her family moved to Mainz in 1956, where she finished her schooling. She studied at the Staatliche Werkkunstschule für Gebrauchsgrafik, a school for applied graphics, until 1959, and then worked for advertising agencies in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf.
She met Franz Josef Degenhardt, his brother Martin, and their circle of friends, including other singer-songwriters (Liedermacher) , Hannes Wader, and Hein and Oss Kröher. In 1964, she married Martin Degenhardt, who died in 2002. Their daughter Annette became a guitarist and composer.
Career
From the mid-1960s, she has worked as a freelance artist. She designed covers for Franz Josef Degenhardt's albums, including Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern. Illustrations to François Villon's Das Große Testament received the "Schönstes Buch" (most beautiful book) award from the Stiftung Buchkunst in 1970.
Artistic style
In her works, Degenhardt appears as a keen observer of persons and their characteristics, rendered with a sense of absurdity and grotesque. Among her topics are enjoyment of life, hate, desire, admiration, bliss, disdain, greed, and suffering. Music and wine are frequent features of her work, also the Gonsbach valley, revolution (Republic of Mainz), vagabonds, dance, musicians, tramps, Ireland (Farewell to Connaught), and, again and again, her husband Martin Degenhardt. She portrayed John Lennon in an etching Give Peace a Chance. Some sequences, such as Fiddle & Pint, were first exhibited in Dublin.
In the 1990s, she turned to women's topics such as Vagabondage, cycles of wild and unique women, in books such as Women in Music, Vagabondage in Blue, and Vagabondage en Rouge, with women making music in protest of political failures and social injustice. Vagabondage Ad Mortem is a danse macabre of 1995. Degenhardt illustrated many texts and books, such as Liam O'Flaherty's Der Stromer, and works by Brecht, Biermann, her brother-in-law Franz Josef Degenhardt, and other political authors, including covers of records of Irish Folk and singer-songwriters.
Awards
1968 Graphik-Biennale-Preis in Kraków, Poland
1976 Graphik-Biennale-Preis in Fredrikstad, Norway
1978 Silver Medal of the world exhibition of Buchkunst (book art) in Tel Aviv for the songbook Das sind unsre Lieder, published by Hein & Oss Kröher 2001: Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate 2019: Hannes Gaab Prize of Mainz
Exhibitions
Exhibitions included: 1988: Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig 1989: The Kenny Gallery, Galway 1990: 1993: Vagabondage – Women in Music, Kulturspeicher of Stadtmuseum Oldenburg 1993: 1994: Imagines – Women in Music, Galerie Kramer, Hamburg 1995: Vagabondage ad Mortem, Andreas Paul Weber Museum, Ratzeburg 1998: Villa Musica 1999: Kulturspeicher, Oldenburg 2002: 2002: The Kenny Gallery, Galway 2004: 2005: Gallery of , Frankfurt 2006: Schloss Landestrost 2007: Stadtmuseum Borken 2007: Maison de Rhénanie-Palatinat, Dijon 2011: Retrospective on the occasion of her 75th birthday in Kulturspeicher of Stadtmuseum Oldenburg
Degenhardt is listed as one of the 100 most influential women in Rhineland-Palatinate.