Ingeborg Gabriel  ohne Titel

Ingeborg Gabriel died of cancer in 1996 after a long and serious illness. Her exhibition, which had been planned for some time, became a post mortem event. Gabriel lived in the countryside near Cologne and drew what surrounded her: plants, snails, insects, animals, dishes .... She worked in series in which she took up the motifs and presented them differently in large numbers.
She dealt with living beings, plants and objects in order to examine them formally and aesthetically. She worked on hundreds of sheets with the same motif and almost none looked like the other.
An examination of the drawing based on different lines, hatching, surfaces etc. was the focus of the artist's interest. I asked Uwe Gabriel, a connoisseur of the art scene, and Michael Krebber to help us choose and hang the exhibition. We decided to show one topic namely the mushrooms in their entirety and depth. So you could see a topic by Ingeborg Gabriel elaborated and grasped in his excellent presence. This clarified how the artist approached the matter and the commitment and energy with which she pursued her cause. The first visitors were Martin Kippenberger and Elfie Semotan. In 1978 Kippenberger had one of his first institutional exhibitions at the Künstlerhaus Hamburg, then directed by Ingeborg Gabriel. Kippenberger was a bit worried whether he would like Gabriel's work, since he hadn't seen much of it yet, but bought some shortly after.