Marlene Dumas has been commissioned to paint an altarpiece for an 18th-century church in Dresden. She admits to being “scared” by the prospect, not least because the work will hang “very high up on the wall”. The altarpiece, which is due to be completed by the end of 2016, will replace a fresco of the Conversion of St Paul that was painted by Osmar Schindler on the walls of St Anne’s Church in Freiberger Platz in 1910. Badly damaged during the Second World War, the fresco deteriorated in the years after the conflict and has now virtually disappeared.
“They are giving me a lot of freedom. I can choose the form. The theme is also open,” Dumas tells The Art Newspaper. “The only ‘restriction’ is that [my painting] should not be too depressing. It should offer some hope,” the South African-born, Amsterdam-based artist says.
She is planning a work on multiple canvases “to work with a structure of fragmentation… like a tree of life with different images on oval or round panels, hanging from its branches”. The piece will explore “different creation myths through the ages—how different cultures imagined how the world came to be and how the human condition is represented”, Dumas says.