A tour of the exhibition “Hedwig Holtz-Sommer—It’s All About What It Means to Be Human...” with curator Melanie Ohst...
It’s the human element that matters...
With this exhibition, the Kunsthalle Rostock is dedicating a solo show to an artist from the third generation of the Ahrenshoop artists’ colony.
Hedwig Holtz-Sommer (1901–1970) settled in Wustrow on the Fischland peninsula in 1934. She first gained recognition for her powerful portraits. Later, she primarily created finely nuanced watercolors of the landscape around Wustrow, colorful floral still lifes, and sensitive depictions of groups of people. Her drawings and illustrations deserve special mention: through their simplicity, they reveal an impressive clarity and expressiveness.
The exhibition features approximately 80 works from various creative phases and traces the development of an artist whose life spanned from the German Empire to the GDR. She engaged not only with nature and the people in her environment, but also with the political and social upheavals of her time. In addition to works on loan, numerous works on paper from the collection of the Kunsthalle Rostock are being presented for the first time.
The retrospective is prompted by new research findings published in November 2025 in a comprehensive biography. These findings offer a fresh, in-depth perspective on Holtz-Sommer’s work and shed light on previously largely unknown aspects of her life and artistic practice.
