KIKI SMITH

With its exhibition “From My Heart” the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München honors Kiki Smith’s special birthday on 18 January 2024. The Munich museum has close ties with the New York artist because Smith has been donating since 2015 and continues to donate her entire print oeuvre in editions to SGSM. Her generosity is renewed with her yearly sending new prints. Thanks to this liberal gesture, SGSM now boasts the internationally largest holdings of Kiki Smith prints.
Throughout Kiki Smith’s career the question of human existence (corporeal as well as metaphysical) has been at the focus of her creative output. In order to better understand the human body, she examined in her early work in the late 1970s human functions and body parts. She pioneered this theme as one of the first contemporary artists. Among the parts that captured her attention were organs, one of them the heart.

By focusing on the motif of the heart, the museum celebrates its close ties with Kiki Smith while offering a singular and concentrated perspective of her profound œuvre. With the choice of this theme, visitors are offered a sense of the artist’s formal and theoretical considerations. Fundamental questions regarding human existence are being raised and explored.