Ingeborg Gabriel at Lempertz Brussels
Ingeborg Gabriel (1951–1996) studied at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg from 1974 to 1978. Early on, she was closely associated with post-avant-garde artists such as Albert Oehlen, Werner Büttner, and Michael Krebber; however, her own work remained in the background for a long time. After completing her studies, she moved into a studio at Künstlerhaus Hamburg, where she organized, among other projects, Martin Kippenberger’s first solo exhibition. Later, she relocated with her family to Kürten in the Bergisches Land region, where she once again established a studio.
From the late 1980s onward, Ingeborg Gabriel devoted herself primarily to the flexible and versatile medium of drawing, which she explored with great conscientiousness and an
experimental spirit—without expecting clear or immediately tangible results. Gabriel produced hundreds of drawings and worked more or less in seclusion. Her motifs and
subjects—houses, heads, portraits, and glasses—were usually drawn from her immediate surroundings, always maintaining a connection to nature. At the same time, she examined the formal aspects of drawing.
Across an unusually broad range of versions, materials, and techniques, she captured plants and living creatures on paper. Between 1989 and 1990, she created works that lend themselves beautifully to storytelling—depicting dragonflies, caterpillars, salamanders, flies, and frogs. At other times, roses, mushrooms, fir trees, landscapes, moles, snails, and birds served as points of departure for her drawings, as did exotic animals such as monkeys and bears. Some forms are rendered in color with brushwork, others with a confident line; occasionally, a subtle sense of humor emerges. For her works, she chose papers of widely varying quality and character. Alongside her drawing materials, paper itself became an essential element of her graphic laboratory experiments, understood as a malleable material in its own right. She employed simple notepaper as well as used, printed, or lined sheets, cardboard, and smooth or rough papers in both light and heavy weights.
Although she largely operated quietly, she and her husband Uwe were firmly embedded in Cologne’s art scene of the 1980s and 1990s. Cosima von Bonin gave up her second exhibition at Galerie Christian Nagel in Cologne to Ingeborg Gabriel, enabling Gabriel to hold her first solo exhibition there. Prior to that, Cosima von Bonin had adapted two of Gabriel’s works as her own in a solo exhibition at Andrea Rosen. Her works are held in the Kippenberger Collection and in the Judith Rothschild Collection at MoMA, New York. After her death, curators Susanne Pfleger and Ellen Seifermann organized the first posthumous solo exhibitions—at the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (March 7–June 7, 1998) and at Kunstverein Heilbronn (September 13–October 25, 1998).
Opening of the exhibition:
March 14, 2026
4 - 9 pm
Duration:
March 15 to March 28, 2026
Lempertz S.A.
Grote Hertstraat 6,
Rue du Grand Cerf
1000 Bruxelles