Limits of the line – Alisa Ehrmann Shek

An exhibition of Alisa Ehrmann Shek’s (1927-2017) sketches, focusing on the female figure and the intimate life of each figure, while emphasizing the flow of the line that captures a concrete action or movement in its entirety and creates strong feelings. Using a paintbrush, marker, or pencil, a visual text is written that expresses in personal language the individual history of the figure. Alisa Ehrmann Shek depicts women very tenderly in her sketches. With clear expressive lines she embraces the figure portayed, even when depicting a somber mood.

Fate was not kind to her and, as a Czech citizen of Jewish descent, she was deported to Ghetto Theresienstadt where she was liberated nearly two years later. Unlike many others she did not choose to document the “horrors”, but her works can be seen as an essentially different testimony instrument.