Biography

1933

Born in Berlin as the daughter of the sculptor couple Dora and Kilian Schirner

1948

Left home at the age of 15

1953

First solo exhibition with "shock collages" in the Zimmergalerie Franck, Frankfurt am Main

1950er Jahre

Traveling through Europe, visiting important museums and collections with her then husband, the art dealer Hans Brockstedt

1960-63

Lives in London after the seperation from her husband, and produces abstract paintings, material collages, illustrations (e.g. for Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland") and her first "depictions of Marilyn Monroe"

1962

Solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London

1963-68

Moves to the Villa Engadina in Piedmont, Italy, and works on pastel colored egg tempera paintings, collages with her own photographs as well as book covers for Italian publishers

1965

Solo exhibition at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin

1968

Returns to Berlin

1971-74

Active in the Berlin feminist group "Brot + Rosen" (Bread + Roses). Begins to film with Helke Sander

1974-1977

Co-organiser and curator of the exhibition “Künstlerinnen international 1877-1977” (Female Artists International 1877-1977), which presents important female artist positions for the first time after the Second World War. At the same time, she publishes own texts and her first large portraits of women emerge

1976

Solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Munich

1977-1978

Scholarship in the Villa Massimo in Rome

1978

Solo exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein

Harun Farocki directs the film portrait "A Picture of Sarah Schumann"

1980er Jahre

Study trips to India and Kenya in the 1980s produced in gouaches and overpainted photographs. Several research journeys to the GDR, following in the footsteps of Theodor Fontane, Hermann von Pückler-Muskau and Peter Joseph Lenné resulted in elegiac landscape and memorial depictions

1983

Solo exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg

1989-2008

Cover design of the work edition by Virginia Woolf in S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a.M.

1990

Solo exhibition at the Goethe Institute, Chicago

1992-1995

Travels to Moscow, paints the cycle “Moscow. Ore + Body” exhibited at Moscow's A3 gallery in 1994

1990er

Landscape paintings from the Mark Brandenburg, cycles “the sea pyramid and the land pyramid in Branitz”, “monument chalk cliffs”, “animals in strange places”, “public baths. bath temple. city baths”, portraits and images of the Madonna, each using different techniques

2000er

Cycles "Bridges over Green and Blue", "Berlin: Walks in a City"

2012

Installative video work by Michaela Melián: "Silvia Bovenschen and Sarah Schumann"

2015

Silvia Bovenschen (1946 – 2017) immortalises her partner in the literary double portrait “Sarahs Gesetz“(Sarah’s Law)

2018

The Städel Museum in Frankfurt / Main included Sarah Schumann in the oral history project “Café Deutschland” (Café Germany) which dealt with the 70 most important protagonists of the first art scene in the early years of the FRG

2019

Film portrait by Bettina Böttinger on Sarah Schumann; premiere as part of the exhibition “Sarah Schumann – Real World. Collages and paintings from 1958-2008” at Van Ham, Cologne

Sarah Schumann died on July 3, 2019 in Berlin-Charlottenburg

Since 2018 VAN HAM Art Estate has been looking after Sarah Schumann's oeuvre