Company with Guard is an installation consisting of a painting and a sculpture. In the foreground of the painting, a cellist plays in deep concentration, behind him stands a mixed company—including a miner and a painter—at the edge of which a naked woman with her child anxiously gazes at the cart in the background. The image takes on a sacred character through the evocation of Mary and the infant Jesus. This religious reference continues with the figures of the Three Kings proceeding behind the group. In the rear of the composition, a woman sits in a cart pulled from left to right by two horses draped in red cloth. Above the Three Kings, on a circular architectural form, we see a dark cluster of armed men. The guard appears separately as a sculpture, connected to the row of black slats attached to the painting. He is an elderly but strong man, represented as a white plaster figure dressed in simple work clothes and rubber boots, staring ahead in deep dismay. This Christmas-themed work, created during the socialist era, retells the story from the Gospel of Matthew, when Herod, King of the Jews, sought the Savior among the newborn children of Bethlehem. When he failed, he ordered his soldiers to kill all male infants under the age of two. The mother, whose eyes search the cart as a possible means of escape, longs to flee with her child from the city overcrowded with soldiers. This moment of the narrative is the dramatic episode of the painting. According to Gille himself, he wished to remain a chronicler of everyday events, but this work undoubtedly goes beyond that intention. The biblical scene, presented as historical, was addressed to the people of the socialist era. The precise time and even the setting of the depicted events are left deliberately ambiguous—yet we recognize Bethlehem, caught in the instant before catastrophe. With this installation, Gille delivers a simple but poignant message to his contemporaries, like a situational report: the artist, the musician, the peasant, the working class, the mother with her child, the lovers, and the spiritual figures of the Three Kings all appear as the powerless subjects of authority, awaiting their fate under the guise of a “peaceful” Christmas. Throughout his career, Gille remained committed to figurative painting. Like his teachers Heisig and Mattheuer, he employed rich colors, broad brushstrokes, and transparent overpainting, positioning himself as a forerunner of consciously non-socialist realist painting. The guard, as the front figure of the installation, specifically anticipates the installation practices of the 1990s, in the post-transition period, when art grappled with processing the legacy of the socialist era.
Company with Guard is an installation consisting of a painting and a sculpture. In the foreground of the painting, a cellist plays in deep concentration, behind him stands a mixed company—including a miner and a painter—at the edge of which a naked woman with her child anxiously gazes at the cart in the background. The image takes on a sacred character through the evocation of Mary and the infant Jesus. This religious reference continues with the figures of the Three Kings proceeding behind the group. In the rear of the composition, a woman sits in a cart pulled from left to right by two horses draped in red cloth. Above the Three Kings, on a circular architectural form, we see a dark cluster of armed men. The guard appears separately as a sculpture, connected to the row of black slats attached to the painting. He is an elderly but strong man, represented as a white plaster figure dressed in simple work clothes and rubber boots, staring ahead in deep dismay. This Christmas-themed work, created during the socialist era, retells the story from the Gospel of Matthew, when Herod, King of the Jews, sought the Savior among the newborn children of Bethlehem. When he failed, he ordered his soldiers to kill all male infants under the age of two. The mother, whose eyes search the cart as a possible means of escape, longs to flee with her child from the city overcrowded with soldiers. This moment of the narrative is the dramatic episode of the painting. According to Gille himself, he wished to remain a chronicler of everyday events, but this work undoubtedly goes beyond that intention. The biblical scene, presented as historical, was addressed to the people of the socialist era. The precise time and even the setting of the depicted events are left deliberately ambiguous—yet we recognize Bethlehem, caught in the instant before catastrophe. With this installation, Gille delivers a simple but poignant message to his contemporaries, like a situational report: the artist, the musician, the peasant, the working class, the mother with her child, the lovers, and the spiritual figures of the Three Kings all appear as the powerless subjects of authority, awaiting their fate under the guise of a “peaceful” Christmas. Throughout his career, Gille remained committed to figurative painting. Like his teachers Heisig and Mattheuer, he employed rich colors, broad brushstrokes, and transparent overpainting, positioning himself as a forerunner of consciously non-socialist realist painting. The guard, as the front figure of the installation, specifically anticipates the installation practices of the 1990s, in the post-transition period, when art grappled with processing the legacy of the socialist era.
Company with Guard is an installation consisting of a painting and a sculpture. In the foreground of the painting, a cellist plays in deep concentration, behind him stands a mixed company—including a miner and a painter—at the edge of which a naked woman with her child anxiously gazes at the cart in the background. The image takes on a sacred character through the evocation of Mary and the infant Jesus. This religious reference continues with the figures of the Three Kings proceeding behind the group. In the rear of the composition, a woman sits in a cart pulled from left to right by two horses draped in red cloth. Above the Three Kings, on a circular architectural form, we see a dark cluster of armed men. The guard appears separately as a sculpture, connected to the row of black slats attached to the painting. He is an elderly but strong man, represented as a white plaster figure dressed in simple work clothes and rubber boots, staring ahead in deep dismay. This Christmas-themed work, created during the socialist era, retells the story from the Gospel of Matthew, when Herod, King of the Jews, sought the Savior among the newborn children of Bethlehem. When he failed, he ordered his soldiers to kill all male infants under the age of two. The mother, whose eyes search the cart as a possible means of escape, longs to flee with her child from the city overcrowded with soldiers. This moment of the narrative is the dramatic episode of the painting. According to Gille himself, he wished to remain a chronicler of everyday events, but this work undoubtedly goes beyond that intention. The biblical scene, presented as historical, was addressed to the people of the socialist era. The precise time and even the setting of the depicted events are left deliberately ambiguous—yet we recognize Bethlehem, caught in the instant before catastrophe. With this installation, Gille delivers a simple but poignant message to his contemporaries, like a situational report: the artist, the musician, the peasant, the working class, the mother with her child, the lovers, and the spiritual figures of the Three Kings all appear as the powerless subjects of authority, awaiting their fate under the guise of a “peaceful” Christmas. Throughout his career, Gille remained committed to figurative painting. Like his teachers Heisig and Mattheuer, he employed rich colors, broad brushstrokes, and transparent overpainting, positioning himself as a forerunner of consciously non-socialist realist painting. The guard, as the front figure of the installation, specifically anticipates the installation practices of the 1990s, in the post-transition period, when art grappled with processing the legacy of the socialist era.
