A look back at decades of acting
“It’s all about emotions,” says Armin Mueller-Stahl about his series Selbst in... (Self in...). He has been working on a daily basis for more than five years. Hundreds of works spring from his memories of theatre and film productions, roles and colleagues. Often figurative, sometimes abstract, they are put to paper in quick strokes. The series of works follows on from Mueller-Stahl’s thousands of painted-over script pages. During his active time as an actor, he used the paper from ‘finished’ script pages for drawings and paintings in mixed media, which were created on the film sets. The events of the day, moods and feelings flowed into them and allowed the actor to process his experiences immediately.
As in the series of Jüdische Freunde (Jewish Friends), the relationship between image and text is also central to the sheets of Selbst in... (Self in...). Mueller-Stahl repeatedly provides insights into personal connections. In addition, the works are a testimony to German and international film history.