Jutta Koether is one of the central figures in contemporary painting. Yet she is more than just a painter. She is also a performance artist, musician, writer and theoretician. Her role as an artist was long reduced to being regarded as a feminist response to the Cologne scene of the late 1980s. With her translucent color fields, the gestural brush stroke, drawings of female bodies and the lyrical appropriation of poetry and art history, she frequently seems to assume positions in contrast to artists such as Martin Kippenberger, Sigmar Polke and Albert Oehlen.

Her paintings reflect a critical position both toward the production and the reception of art. As she stated recently in an interview she has always been interested in: “European history when painting was still innovative.” At the M HKA she will show an installation of paintings, including four paintings which are interpretations from two paintings by Rubens.