Inside the Outside

Encounter between Two People: A Painter and a Refugee

Ruprecht von Kaufmann (born 1974 in Munich, lives and works in Berlin) is considered one of the leading representatives of contemporary narrative painting. When he began his portrait series "Inside the Outside," the media were filled with images of arriving refugee flows. The artist wanted to understand what drives people to leave their homes and risk fleeing for a life in a foreign land. Therefore, he invited refugees to his studio and painted them. "An oil portrait is a status symbol. I wanted to use this symbolic power to give a face to some of the people hidden behind the anonymous television images." This resulted in 28 paintings, which were exhibited at the United Nations headquarters in New York in early 2019. The publication of the same name for this extraordinary project contains, in addition to the 28 images and the stories of the portrayed, texts by Chechen journalist Maynat Kurbanova and Italian director Michele Cinque, who bring a special intensity to the book through their personal experiences with the subject matter. (Text: Publisher)