Untitled 2017

Like many of von Wulffen's new works, this lithograph edition, based on an original watercolour painting, makes reference to dark moments in history. Von Wulffen's many representations of childhood often return to pre-war images that were later adopted as traditional or ideal aspects of German culture, uncoupled from the legacy left by National Socialism. The 1911 songbook "Sang und Klang fürs Kinderherz“ is re-drawn as the entirely more sinister "Gram und Schmerz fürs Kinderherz" (Fear and Pain for Children's Hearts). Depictions of public figures and fragments of family memories similarly make asides to troubled histories. A man pictured perched on a windowsill holding two dachshunds relates a story of an escaping Jewish schoolteacher remembered by von Wulffen's grandmother, while the German-Jewish poet Paul Celan appears elsewhere drowned in the Seine. Celan, who escaped deportation while his parents were taken to concentration camps, committed suicide following years of depression and can be seen as yet another of von Wulffen's artistic outsiders.