The exhibition at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, curated by Dr. Michael Hering, brings together paintings, drawings, and hand-painted ceramic tiles by Conny Maier, transforming the museum into an unsettling paradise.
Opening: October 20, 2026 | 6:30 PM
On View: October 21, 2026 - January 17, 2027
September 29, 2026 (Munich, Germany) – By showcasing Conny Maier the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München is presenting a rarity on the international art scene – an artist who is both authentic and unconventional at the same time. Her paintings and drawings captivate viewers with their distinctive artistic signature style.
At first sight, you have the impression that Conny Maier is channeling the imagery of early Expressionism, especially Munich’s Blauer Reiter movement, while her color palette can take on the subtle hues of the Old Masters. This beautiful illusion is disrupted by aesthetic outbursts that are closest to Art Brut, which always lend her motifs a wild and archaic quality. Her enigmatic scenes are determined by archetypes that explore the elementary forms of human interaction. They tell of grand emotions like Love, Fear, and Fury – the predominant themes in the arts since Antiquity.
Conny Maier will transform the Munich exhibition spaces into an era-spanning global landscape as well as an enchanted monastic garden. These spaces could be regarded as early paradises were it not for the unsettling idea they might evolve into an apocalypse. Despite the familiarity of the subject, the images also suggest a sub-text beneath which chasms open up. The topics of the unknown and the uncanny resonate in every work. However, while nature has thus far served merely as a supporting element in her figurative paintings, Maier places it squarely at the center of her focus in her Munich exhibition project.
Already in fall of 2024 Conny Maier conducted intensive field studies in Brandenburg’s natural environment with a florist friend in her circle. She later assessed the results of her work in her Portugal studio using these to sketch out possible thematic groups for her project using storyboards. In the Study Room of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung she then expanded her vocabulary from this field research to include classical art-historical motifs. At the focus here were unusual plant depictions throughout art history which were paraphrased and incorporated into her visual language.
What is new here is that, against the backdrop of this research, Conny Maier infuses her drawing and painting studies with allegory and mythology, evoking the enigmatic motifs of medieval tapestries or festive Baroque interiors. Already in these historic prototypes the meaning-imbued plant world conveyed joyful but also unpleasant messages, provided you knew how to read the symbols and signs. Meanwhile, in the Rotunda, the artist will create a salon adorned with blue-and-white tiles, entirely in the style of Baroque festive culture, where visitors can linger and lose themselves in fairy-tale-like imagery, as if in a garden maze.
Attending the exhibition, you can experience hands on how Conny Maier spreads global landscapes within her drawings, paintings, and tile murals that put any floral still-life in the shade while allowing visitors to become butterfly-catchers, botanists, and conservationists.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Searching for Paradise by Conny Maier opens on October 20, 2026, at 6:30 PM at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and will be on view through January 17, 2027. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Michael Hering, Director of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung.
Press preview by appointment on November 19 – 20, 2026.
Address
Pinakothek der Moderne
Barer Straße 40
80333 Munich
Opening Hours
Daily | 10 AM – 6 PM
Thursdays | 10 AM – 8 PM
Closed on Mondays
About Conny Maier
German artist Conny Maier explores fundamental questions about human nature, ecology, dominance, and control. The off-kilter figuration in Maier’s paintings, coupled with the inter-species entanglements that her work depicts, articulate precarity and vulnerability as elemental states of being. Her painterly reflections on polarities like dominance and submission, equilibrium and instability, the human and the non-human take an unflinching look at the final throes of the Anthropocene, asking not only what should come to an end but what kind of new day might dawn.
Conny Maier lives and works in Portugal. She is currently included in Bunker Berlin #5, the new collection presentation at the Boros Collection, Berlin. She was selected as one of the three recipients of Deutsche Bank’s prestigious Artists of the Year Prize in 2021. Her expansive solo exhibition Beautiful Disasters was curated by Udo Kittelmann at the Langen Foundation, Neuss, and accompanied by her first monograph. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at venues including Art Basel Unlimited 2023, Basel; De 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg; PalaisPopulaire, Berlin; MUDEC, Milan; and Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden.
Conny Maier is part of a number of public collections including Albertina Museum, Vienna; Alkar Contemporary Collection, Bilbao; Boros Collection, Berlin; Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt; Hildebrand Collection, Leipzig; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin; Kistefos Museum, Norway; Musée d’art Moderne, Paris; among others.
Image Credits:
1. Conny Maier, Glücklicher, 2026. Self-made oil stick on paper. Courtesy of the artist, Société and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Trevor Good.
2. Conny Maier, Gebrüder Q., 2026. Painted and glazed tiles, ca. 200 x 500 cm. Courtesy of the artist, Société and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München.