The art of Runhild Röder

Here is a brief interpretation of Röder's art, based on three paintings I observed during my visit to her storage space. I believe that these three works help to establish a conceptual basis to understand her art. Röder presents the body as a space of expressionist revolt.

A fundamental tension: academicism versus embodiment

What strikes the eye immediately is the recurrence of the word "Académi" (or "Académici") inscribed directly on the canvas, like graffiti on a wall. This is not a decorative signature, it is a critique embedded in the material itself. Röder seems to position her work in tension with classical academicism: that tradition of anatomically correct representation, of perspective, of "fine finish." Her figures are deliberately "ill-made": proportions are willfully distorted, limbs stretch or twist, faces are reduced to essential marks. The Academy is invoked only to be surpassed, even trampled underfoot by gestural mark-making.

The three works revolve around the human body, but a destabilized body.

The reclining figure in sepia evokes both a Western odalisque tradition and a primitivist sculpture; the line is rough, almost scraped, with a texture reminiscent of art brut.

The red-and-white silhouette fragments the body into geometric volumes while retaining a violent organic energy.

The yellow composition, more abstract, retains figurative cues (a shoulder, a torso) within thick fields of color, applied with an almost physical spontaneity.

This closely echoes what Montreal critic Henry Lehmann perceived in her work: a lineage with European Expressionism, and notably with the CoBrA tendency (Appel, Alechinsky) that blending of archaic figuration, vivid color, and liberated gesture.

Philosophy in the material

Röder is not only a painter; she is a philosopher who has also pursued religious studies. This is legible in her handling of the material: she does not seek a smooth surface, but rather trace and imprint. The brushstrokes are thick, at times choppy; the pencil or charcoal underdrawing remains visible beneath the paint, as though the work retains the memory of its own making.

This is an aesthetics of presence rather than representation. The body is not depicted, it is embodied within the canvas.

Irony and fragility

The inscription "yellow mistakes" on the yellow canvas is revealing. It introduces a self-reflexive, ironic dimension: the mistake is not concealed but exhibited, even celebrated. The color yellow, brilliant and unstable, becomes the symbol of this embraced imperfection. This is anti-academicism carried to its extreme: not only is technical perfection not pursued, but the "botched" is displayed as an aesthetic value in itself.

In summary

Runhild Röder's art strikes me as a philosophy of the body through painting: a body that resists classical geometry, that expresses itself through raw color and torn gesture, and that carries within it a reflection on the origins of representation. She stands at the crossroads of German Expressionism, art brut, and a certain spirituality of matter, an artist who has devoted her life to making Western contemporary art cohabit with the most archaic forms of human expression.