Travels of the artist Antje Fretwurst-Colberg

Antje Fretwurst-Colberg (born 1940 in Hamburg) studied painting and graphics with Arno Mohr at the Weißensee Art Academy in East Berlin from 1967. She undertook many journeys in the course of her artistic career, about which she reported in an interview conducted by e-mail:

"In GDR times I went on several trips, which were organized by the Verband Bildender Künster (=VBK; Association of Visual Artists) Berlin. We travelled to the cities of Moscow and Leningrad, to large exhibitions. The participants came from different sections of the VBK Berlin. One trip in 1982 was to Moravany (Slovakia) and was an international painters' plein air. It went on for three weeks, and we were able to take our children who were not yet in school, work well there, and exchange ideas.
I was also involved in a trip to Central Asia (as it was called then), which went to the capitals of each Soviet republic and went as far as Samarkand. This was a group trip led by tour guides from each Soviet republic. We were rarely allowed to move away from them and go our own ways. Only sometimes we succeeded to move independently for a short time.
We were not able to work artistically there. The group dynamics alone made that difficult. And it was also not desired to draw places or landscapes. As a young group of students we travelled from the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee to Poznan (Poland) to see a "Legèr exhibition", which was very impressive for us.
We also travelled to Leningrad to visit the local art academy as a student group. This was organized by our university. Some friendships with former Russian students are still maintained today. One of the trips was to Romania. There, too, it was not desirable to draw the landscapes. But on all trips we visited the museums and exhibitions, got to know people. Those experiences were very enriching for us! The trips, from the university or VBK, were always financed by the institutions."

Trip to Cuba in 1986

"Our trip, because there were two of us: Núria Quevedo, the painter, who was born in Spain, Spanish parents, had a Spanish passport, but had lived in the GDR since childhood, and I. Núria Quevedo had received an invitation to the international festival "Latin America, Africa, Asia" 1986 in Havana, and was then delegated by the Association of Visual Artists to this festival. She was allowed to take a companion with her. So I, as a citizen of the GDR, came on this trip with her. We both represented the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR at this festival. It was a festival of cultures, especially of the visual arts, music, film, the coming together of people. It took place every 2 years in Havana at that time, I don't know how many years in total.

We stayed in a good hotel in Havana and could move freely, choose the exhibitions, concerts, and the official and private meetings of the artists with each other, we also visited some artists in their private studios and apartments in Havana. On the occasion of the official meetings of the Cuban Artists' Association, to which I had been specially invited, I was provided with an interpreter. It was particularly interesting for us to visit the Havana Art Academy and also to be able to work in the printing workshop there. There I created a drypoint etching. We also met artists from other countries who were working there, watched the printing technique of a Japanese man who was printing his woodblocks. And we watched the way the Latin Americans (who were present) did it, who left a lot, almost all the craftsmanship, and of course the printing, to the printer. He made the etching plates according to their design. We didn't know that at all. We did everything ourselves, right up to the test print for an edition. That's what our Berlin professor Arno Mohr had done and taught us.

We also met a friend and art scholar from East Berlin. Through him and through new friendships, we got invitations and addresses to travel around the country afterwards. We did, and it was a very private trip that we took by bus. It took us to the city of Trinidad and as far as Santiago de Cuba, in the very south of the island. There we were guests of the "Centro Cultural" which was primarily a graphic center. But sculptors also worked there.

This trip was a great experience and also very stimulating for our own artistic work. After our return, we created works on the theme of Cuba. I painted gouaches, which I also exhibited a little later in the "Gallery 100" in Berlin Hohenschönhausen. In the meantime they were to be seen several times, last time in 2021 in the "Fischlandhaus" Wustrow, together with prints of me. There are also etchings that were created in connection with this trip. Nowadays I no longer own all of them, but still most of these gouaches and prints."

Trip to Mexiko in 1988

My husband, Friedrich Wilhelm Fretwurst, and I traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1988. (Our three children stayed in Berlin!).

It was an exchange with Mexican artists from that city: the couple Carlos and Estella Kunte, he a painter, she a sculptor, were acquainted with the GDR commercial attaché based in Mexico City. They were planning a trip to some European capitals and their museums. Since they also wanted to visit the GDR, they asked him to arrange for an artist couple in East Berlin with whom an exchange could take place. The desired couple should speak Spanish, if possible, but necessarily English, and should be married. This was the case for us. I had learned Spanish after the trip to Cuba.

We flew to Mexico City, from there we continued with the car of our hosts to Cuernavaca, where we also stayed with them in their house. Guided by them, their friends and their son, we visited many cultural sites and museums of the country. To Mexico City, we were able to travel independently and see the extensive, impressive museum in Mexico City, the Frida Kahlo House and Museum, and Diego Rivera's art. (Our hosts were always very concerned about us, as it was not entirely safe to move freely around the country as foreigners.) But we made an independent, larger trip by bus to Oaxaca, visited the important pyramid on Monte Alban, and especially the Orozco Museum, were able to study its expressionist paintings, and Mexican mural painting, as we had done before with the works of Rivera.

On the flat roof of the house of our hosts it was easy to stay and work there on watercolours and drawings, some immediate reactions to our travel impressions. Of these works, almost all were sold in an exhibition that took place shortly after our trip, in the "Galerie unter den Linden", in Berlin. That was at a time, shortly before the German reunification, when the GDR currency still existed, but when West German currency could be exchanged at a rate of 1:10, for example, at the Friedrichstrasse train station, and many a FRG citizen bought cheaply in galleries and bookstores with packs of GDR bills."

After German reunification, Antje Fretwurst-Colberg and her husband Friedrich-Wilhelm Fretwurst undertook numerous private trips abroad, which they still process artistically today. They went to France, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Lithuania and Morocco, among other places. Further insights into Antje Fretwurst-Colberg's work and vita can be found on her website: http://antje-fretwurst-colberg.de/.

Antje Fretwurst-Colberg's emails were translated by Art in Networks.