Die Abstraktion der Dinge. Marianne Mangels in dialogue with Louise Stomps

For some time, she had sought to ‘achieve a far-reaching abstrac­tion of things’. With these words Marianne Mangels described her own goals in working with sculpture on 8 August 1980 in a letter to Hans Stephan, the director of Haus Coburg at that time. Marianne Mangels, born in Augustenburg in 1908, lived in Delmenhorst from 1955 until her death in 1990. She had attend­ed a school for cera­mics in Bunzlau, and then studied sculpture in Berlin with Milly Steger (1881 Rheinberg – 1948 Berlin). Mangels travelled to Venice, Rome, Florence and London, but lived in seclusion after World War II and rarely exhibited her work.

The exhibition at Haus Coburg is the first comprehensive showing of the artist’s work, presented in dialogue with a contemporary of hers. Like Marianne Mangels, the artist Louise Stomps (1900 Berlin – 1988 Wasserburg am Inn) also established her artistic prac­tice in Berlin. Both studied with Milly Steger, who taught sculp­ture and life drawing in the teaching spaces of the Verein der Künstlerinnen zu Berlin, a Berlin-based association of women artists, until 1942. While Milly Steger mainly worked figuratively, Marianne Mangels and Louise Stomps were concerned with ab­stract form, but without completely abandoning references to the human body. Both also share the the loss of their respective studio spaces and works due to the destruction during the Second World War, ultimately leading to their withdrawal from the Berlin art scene. It is part of the discourse around these early women sculptors that their works are being rediscovered and revisited in the 21st century.