August 26 to November 2, 2025: Dieter Appelt – Gerhard Altenbourg Prize 2025

The Berlin artist Dieter Appelt (born 1935) has been using his camera since the 1960s to explore the losses of modern society. A trained musician and opera singer, he discovered photography as a medium for reconnecting with nature, myth, and transience. In numerous photographic performances, Appelt poetically places his own body, in all its vulnerability, at the center of his work. His art is based on an intense observation of nature and the impulse to translate his own thoughts and feelings into images.

The exhibition at the Prince’s Palace in Altenburg Castle presents key works by the artist and offers insights into Appelt’s photographic oeuvre. His images, created in a consistent black-and-white aesthetic, captivate with their experimental nature, sensuality, and profound meaning. Alongside large-format, often serial photographic works, the exhibition also features drawings, objects, and films by the artist. A comprehensive educational program provides diverse approaches to Appelt’s visual world and the questions it addresses, which remain relevant today.

With Dieter Appelt, the Lindenau Museum Altenburg honors a great photographer and performance artist with the Gerhard Altenbourg Prize 2025 – the most important art prize in Central Germany – for his life’s work.

A catalogue will be published by Kerber Verlag to accompany the exhibition.