'Stern', Marlene Dumas

Artwork details

Artist

Marlene Dumas (born 1953)

Title

Stern

Date 2004

MediumOil paint on canvas

Dimensionssupport: 1101 x 1302 x 24 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Purchased with assistance from Foundation Dutch Artworks and Bank Giro Loterij 2007

Reference

T12312

Not on display

Summary

Stern is a large, nearly square-format painting showing a face seen in profile, lying down. Enlarged to giant proportions, and filling almost the entire picture frame, the face is a deathly white, unrelieved by the warmth of any colour that might suggest life. The eyes are closed, as though the subject is sleeping, but her black lips and black lines suggesting a rope around her neck appear to confirm that the subject is dead. Stern is in fact a death portrait, named after the German periodical which first printed the shocking photograph of the corpse of Ulrike Meinhof, the Red Army Faction terrorist who either committed suicide or was murdered in her Stammheim prison cell in May 1976… (read more)