Marie-Louise Exner has lived on the southern tip of the Danish Wadden Sea island of Fanø for over 30 years. In her etchings, woodcuts and lithographs, the artist focuses on the mudflats, the beach or the salt marshes - the ever-changing transitional areas between water and land that she loves to explore on her forays along the coast. One feature of Exner's artistic engagement with her environment is that she usually focusses on the ground. The aspects of vastness and openness that characterise the theme of landscape are usually transferred entirely onto the surface. In this way, she creates graphically abstract compositions full of musicality and rhythm, in which subtle observations of nature seem to alternate with imaginative interpretations (1).
Exner's stay on Föhr as an artist in residence at the MKdW in April 2024 brought a new motif with it: The artist realised that Föhr and Fanø are similar in many ways, but it was above all the differences that appealed to her. Thus, the German North Sea island is generally flatter than its Danish neighbour and does not have as many hills and high dunes. Perhaps it was this that inspired her to include more of the firmament in the woodcuts she now created - horizontal lines and structures can now be seen more frequently (2, 3). The expressive woodcuts by the Glücksstadt artist Max Kahlke (1892-1928), who died at an early age and whose works Exner had already become acquainted with in 2023 as a participating artist in the exhibition ‘Steamers, Dykes, Dramas. Prints from the Collection and Contemporary Positions' (Feb 19 - Jun 18), also provided a strong impetus. Kahlke's prints of his native Elbmarsch are full of emotional force and conflict, to which Exner responds with her own visual language. (4).
The artist donated the four woodcuts shown below to the MKdW - thank you very much, Marie-Louise!
Marie-Louise Exner was accompanied by the Danish writer and poet Mirian Due, who also explores the theme of landscape in her artistic work.
