GEDOK founded in 1926
- helonconning
- Aug 6
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 7
I am now back home after my 2 month residency, so this blog is a long one. My Stuttgart blogs have focused on all the things I went to and got done! Now I am back cosy and at home, I have been reflecting on the beautiful people I have met, the awesome friendships and bonds that I made in such a short time. Everyone I met living and working in GEDOK, and those associated, made me feel so welcomed and loved. My cosmically random expressive ways and ideas where embraced and taken seriously. As most of you will know I came late to art, it was more of a self healing practice when I began my journey in 2010. In many ways I still feel and appreciate the peace and nowness that tapping into my innate creativity has given me, and I continued to spread the word of the healing nature of the arts. This time out was the first time in 10 years I have stopped, refected and fully considered my artist practice. Even when I began my art education with Access to HE Art and Design at Wirral Met College in 2012, I never gave myself a chance to breathe and reflect on the creative direction I was headed. Then in 2016 as I began my Fine Art Degree, while I was supporting and caring for my parents on their journey into dementia. The degree was my one constant and I also was fortunate enough to find a studio near to home in Hoylake in 2017. This was my santurary and again I don't think I stopped to breathe and to contemplate my direction. My art practice has always been expressive, with one foot in the past, as I love to study processes, portraiture and life drawing sharing this passion with others and to encourage fellow humans to access their own innate creative expression. Looking back I still did not give myself the time I needed to fully hone in on a body of work and so when I being at GEDOK it was my chance to step back and explore the way I have been working. Oh what an opportunity to feel the joy of being only responsible for myself with no other outside influences to distract and oppress my creativity. When I arrived at GEDOK I said to fellow artists, "I dont have a body of work, I'm expressive I just do what I feel like doing". So for the first 4 weeks I went into automatic followng the same patterns that I had in the past, jumping from one thing to another, this I felt was my artist practice! Yes, I was running around filling my boots with exhibitions, performances, collaboradoodle, expressive workshops but not really stopping to contemplate my practice. So in July I spent more time in the studio. My love of people became absolutely enhanced as I began to paint a portrait of Ida Dehmel (GEDOK founder) I worked on her for 4 weeks, in oil paint. I was very happy with the body and hands but Ida's face kept changing. Ida went through so many different expressions and colours as I was looking at her from a photo (on laptop), I totally over worked her face. This intense and beautifully challenging process taught me that I really could have stopped, wiped away and started again, but as always I was determined to wittle away until I got where I wanted to be. Lesson learnt - its ok to create the same thing more than once! Through this stuggle, and the stuggle was real🤭I know it seems daft but I can now proudly say I am a abstract portrait painter!
What I began to notice for the first time, although probably obvious to everyone who knows me, is that I am naturally drawn to the abstract and a different way of seeing. There was a mirror in my studio and I decided to do a self portrait in oil pastel. The shapes began to form the colours came without thinking I let automatism come to the fore. Then I did a portrait of my partner Laurence, when he came to visit, again it all fell into place. I understand now that I am a painter of the abstract and I can now begin to get together a body of work. This was very enlightening and such an obvious matural extension to the work I have done in the past. I was in a beautiful GEDOK single minded self empowered creative bubble and I intend to stay in this bubble with this feeling as I continue my journey within our beautiful and thiving St Helens aritst community. I am now committed to promoting the spirit of GEDOK and our twin city of Stuttgart with the fellow humans of St Helens.
Excited to announce that Gedok Artist Elke Lehmenn will be heading to St Helens late September 2025 (for a 6 week stay) to create, collaborate and share her awesome artist practice.
@helon_conning @artistledsthelens @sthlibrariesandart @sthelenscouncil @acegrams @gedok_stuttgart @afdrathausstuttgart @elkelehmann42
The following infomation can be found via https://www.gedok-stuttgart.de/
The following infomation can be found via https://www.gedok-stuttgart.de/
The founding of GEDOK
The association was founded in Hamburg in 1926 by Ida Dehmel (1870-1942)
Gemeinschaft deutscher und oesterreichischer Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen" (Community of German and Austrian Women Artists and Art Friends),
The following extracts are from: - https://www.gedok-stuttgart.de/
"...doesn't want to be a club in the old sense, but a real united-ness; I dare say: a community, united in the goal of mutual enrichment." Ida Dehmel, Mannheim speech, 1927. In: Ariadne. Almanac of the archives of the German women's movement. Issue 8, July 1987
The GEDOK was founded in Hamburg in 1926 by Ida Dehmel, at a time when gender equality had theoretically found its way into the Weimar constitution, in practice, however, it was by no means the norm. Ida Dehmel was an extraordinary woman who thought far beyond genre boundaries and social classes and was equally committed to art and women's rights. The fact that she is largely unknown today is due to two criteria that led to social invisibility at the time: she was a woman and a Jew She took her own life in 1942.
However, her idea of a 'Community of German and Austrian Artists' Associations of All Art Genres' bore fruit. Today there are regional groups in 23 German cities, only the abbreviation GEDOK now stands for 'Community of Artists and Art Supporters. A unique selling point of GEDOK is its interdisciplinarity, which is due to Ida Dehmel's free spirit.
The GEDOK Stuttgart today
The GEDOK Stuttgart is an undogmatic network of artists, a cross-disciplinary cultural center, a place for exchange and encounters, a platform for a wide variety of artistic forms of expression.
Supported by the commitment of its members, GEDOK brings out a program of events three times a year with exhibitions, concerts, readings, performances, workshops, lectures, studio visits and celebrations, which include members and non-members alike, Women and men are involved. Since the gallery is not commercial, it also offers artists a space to easily share ideas, concepts and experiments with the public. GEDOK Stuttgart is institutionally supported by the art sponsors of GEDOK Stuttgart, the city of Stuttgart and the state of Baden-Württemberg.
The GEDOK is interdisciplinary, bringing together artists of the visual arts, applied arts, performing arts, literature and music under one roof. The leitmotif of GEDOK Stuttgart can also be derived from this open structure: exchange.The mainstays of the GEDOK self-image are therefore also the cooperation with other cultural institutions, the international exchange programme with Stuttgart's twin cities and the sponsorship of the children's and youth baroque orchestra Die Telemannen.The sponsoring association, the Bundesgedok, is politically active in various committees (see www.gedok.de/about-us/networks/).
Gedok eV is a non-profit organization and is organized on a voluntary basis. The association currently has more than 2,750 members in 23 German cities (as of: May 2020).
The development of GEDOK Stuttgart
The history of GEDOK is closely linked to strong female personalities. Elle Hoffmann, who had been part of the board since the Stuttgart local group was founded in 1937 and who steered the fortunes of GEDOK Stuttgart as chairwoman for 19 years after 1945, was a woman, who „stubbornly went her own way“. In the post-war period, which was characterized by economic hardship, she and the artists organized festive evenings and events that were so popular that neither existing improvised rooms nor chairs were sufficient. Some of the proceeds went into a fund for female artists.
In 1951, GEDOK Stuttgart finally looked for its own event rooms. The plan for our own artists' house slowly took shape.
Elle Hoffmann fought hard for financing for two years, Finally, in 1953, construction began on the GEDOK house, which was specially tailored to the needs of female artists, with its 34 residential studios and its event room for exhibitions and concerts. In 1955, the first women artists moved into the house, designed and realized by architect Grit Bauer-Revellio, and in 1958 an extension with three residential studios and a ballet hall was added.
There are currently 20 artists of different ages and all artistic disciplines living and working in the GEDOK House, today's pivotal point is the diverse artistic club life of GEDOK Stuttgart with its stimulating atmosphere between living and working, young and old and the diverse interdisciplinary exchange.
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