Armin Mueller-Stahl: Finding yourself in the other person

We know Armin Mueller-Stahl as a versatile artist in acting, music and painting as well as an astute social observer. He has always accepted this responsibility as an artist, as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently stated in a speech about him.

Mueller-Stahl himself once described it as follows: “Better a kink in my career than in my spine”.

When he signed the open letter against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976, it meant the end of his career in the former GDR.

However, Mueller-Stahl did not allow his art, his skills and his success to be taken away from him, but simply took them with him: to West Germany in 1980, later to reunified Germany, then to Hollywood in the USA and all over the world. Armin Mueller-Stahl moves between countries as well as between artistic métiers, all of which he masters masterfully.

The bridge builder

The artist himself once described his profession as a “bridge builder” - an extraordinary artistic approach that creates connections and transcends borders. This cosmopolitan attitude also makes Mueller-Stahl's paintings nationally and internationally great art that endures.

Armin Mueller-Stahl's touching images of people are created through the interplay between individual experiences and an interest in others - in the spirit of Wilhelm von Humboldt's idea that “the essence of man is to recognize himself in another”. With his talent for empathizing with different life stories and characters, the artist creates authentic and profound, yet very personal paintings that are unparalleled in recent art history.

Buddenbrooks and other “notes of feelings”

Inspired by his work on films such as “Utz” (1992) and the film adaptation of the literary classic “Buddenbrooks” (2008), he created entire graphic and painterly cycles that captured his impressions and experiences of character study and filming. In this way, Mueller-Stahl created a complete work of art. 

These “notes of feelings” serve both as a testimony to an intensive balance to his acting work, but also as artistic documentation of a working and creative process.

The painting “Buddenbrooks” stems from this same careful and comprehensive study of Thomas Mann's novel of the century and the intensive work required to portray the patriarch of the Lübeck merchant family. As with the script pages he painted, the expressive brushstrokes combine with an abstractly reduced color landscape and quick character sketches to create a complex depiction of the scene. 

Focus on people

Mueller-Stahl's works reveal a great affinity for drawing and painting the subtle nuances of human faces and the traits hidden within them. “Here, the artist's talent as an actor becomes concretely visible in his ability to fathom characters, to put himself in their shoes, and at the same time to capture situations atmospherically and convey them with painterly means,” says Lucie Klysch, curator of Galerie ARTES Berlin. “The attention and the honest interest in the inner being of a counterpart - that is what also characterizes Mueller-Stahl as a painter. His art conveys a message of empathy and understanding that encourages us to overcome our own biases.”

From oil and acrylic paints to charcoal and pencil - every brushstroke, every line is well-considered and also exemplary of a practical memory work: of the artist's dialog with himself in a different time and role, quasi with his ego as a counterpart. With the complexity of his artistic expression, Armin Mueller-Stahl represents an exceptional phenomenon in the art of the 20th and early 21st centuries. “It is this unique ability to combine beauty and depth that has prompted us to show an extensive cross-section of his work,” emphasizes Lucie Klysch.

ARTES Berlin presents Armin Mueller-Stahl

Galerie ARTES Berlin is showing more than 50 works by the artist in a wide-ranging exhibition in May 2024.

The pictures in the exhibition were selected together with Armin Mueller-Stahl and the publisher Frank-Thomas Gaulin, who has accompanied the artist for many decades. “We are particularly proud to present Armin Mueller-Stahl's latest work cycle ‘Jewish Fates, Friends and Companions’ in this form for the first time in a gallery exhibition,” says Klysch.

On display are a large number of personalities from the Jewish community, including prominent figures from the worlds of art, culture, politics and science, such as Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Hannah Ahrendt and Billy Wilder. Each portrait tells a story of survival and resistance, of cultural diversity and intellectual brilliance, of personal friendship and solidarity, of a counterpart in whom we can seek and find ourselves at any time. 

Exhibition Armin Mueller-Stahl at ARTES Berlin

See all works by Armin Mueller-Stahl

Armin Mueller-Stahl, a world star with many talents, begins a Hollywood career at the age of 60 and enters the public eye as a visual artist at the age of 70.

He was born on December 17, 1930 in Tilsit, East Prussia, the third of five children. His mother was a doctor and his father a banker. After leaving school, Armin Mueller-Stahl studied musicology in Berlin and pursued a career as a concert violinist. After completing his studies, however, he decided to pursue acting. And although he was initially rejected by the Berlin State Drama School for “lack of talent”, he received his first permanent engagement at the Berlin Theater in 1952.

From 1956, he appeared in numerous films in the GDR, taking on around 60 leading roles over the course of time and winning numerous awards. In 1976, he signed an open letter against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann. Despite his success, he subsequently received hardly any offers of roles. During this time, he writes his first book entitled “Verordneter Sonntag”.

In 1980, he moved with his second wife and son to West Berlin and later to Schleswig-Holstein. He builds on his acting successes in the GDR and plays in the theater as well as in film and television. In 1985, he turned down the role of the head doctor in the television series “Die Schwarzwaldklinik” and instead conquered Hollywood with films such as “Avalon” and “Night on Earth”. In 1997, he was nominated for an Oscar for his role in “Shine”.

In Germany, he shines as Thomas Mann in the TV three-parter “Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman”. Alongside his acting career, he also devoted himself to painting and writing.

However, his first exhibition as a painter only took place on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Since 1985, he has lived mainly in Sierksdorf on the Bay of Lübeck. He spends the rest of his time in Pacific Palisades near Los Angeles or in Berlin-Köpenick. In 2008, he was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is also the fifth honorary citizen of Schleswig- Holstein.