A distinctive feature of the artistic oeuvre Erika Rintelen created between 1988 and 2004 is a specific relatedness to social reality. The social context is a source of crucial inspiration and impulse, but likewise a target of critical intervention. Consequently, many of the works deal with key concerns of contemporary political discourse: war and peace, refugees and displaced persons, globalisation, disparity of milieus, urban frigidity. Erika Rintelen uses art as a means of alerting viewers to the complexity of the problems she addresses; thus her aesthetic appeal is always at the same time a political one.

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The “Wall Paintings” presented here have a special place in Erika Rintelen’s work. Mostly created in 1989 and 1990, they are an artistic response to a historic event of global political significance: the fall of the Berlin Wall. The cycle of paintings that deal with this process conveys a vivid impression of the revolutionary dynamics at work during that period. It reflects people’s courage, their struggles, their hopes and disappointments. Some pictures heighten the authenticity of the artistic statement by integrating original fragments of the Wall and other border fortifications, collected by the artist shortly after the “Wende” ("Turnaround"), in what had until then been the “Death Zone”. This method makes part of recent German history accessible to immediate sensual experience.