by Redazione 09/11/2026
Categories: Exhibitions / Disclaimer
From November 24, 2026, to January 22, 2027, at the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Milan, an exhibition of recent paintings by Austrian artist Martha Jungwirth draws inspiration from visits to Sigmund Freud’s Viennese apartment. At the heart of her exploration are Minna Bernays’s room and the psychoanalytic couch.
Sigmund Freud’s Viennese apartment serves as the starting point for a new series of paintings by Martha Jungwirth (Vienna, 1940), the featured artist in the exhibition *Minna’s Bedroom*, scheduled from November 24, 2026, to January 22, 2027, at the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Milan. The exhibition brings together recent works inspired by the artist’s visits to the home and studio of the founder of psychoanalysis, transforming a place linked to the history of the discipline into an opportunity for a painterly reflection on memory, intimacy, and the presence of the body.
The exhibition’s title refers to Minna Bernays, Freud’s sister-in-law, who lived with the family. Due to the apartment’s unusual layout, her room could only be reached by passing through the bedroom that Freud shared with his wife. It is precisely the floor plan of the house—which Jungwirth studied closely during her visits—that makes this particular spatial arrangement and the ambiguities arising from it immediately apparent.
Over the course of six decades, Jungwirth has developed a personal abstract language that is constantly engaged with the outside world. Her studio is filled with photographs cut out from newspapers, reproductions of works of art, and architectural details—visual materials that fuel a creative process in which contemporary events have also frequently found a place. The images and impressions gathered by the artist are not reproduced directly on the canvas but become stimuli capable of triggering inner and fleeting impulses that form the basis of the creative process.
“My works are records of my emotions,” says Jungwirth.
Freud’s house also serves this function: it is not a subject to be documented or faithfully represented, but rather the catalyst for a painterly process that the artist describes as an adventure, situated in a state of tension “between the controlled and the uncontrolled.”
In Jungwirth’s interpretation, two rooms in the apartment take on special significance: the sofa in the study, on which patients would recline during sessions to discuss the contents of their unconscious, and Minna Bernays’s bedroom, whose location relative to Freud’s room introduced an element of ambiguity regarding the woman’s role within the family. Two distinct spaces, united by the act of lying down and by the intimate and sensual dimension associated with the bed.
The motif of the reclining body also evokes a long iconographic tradition in the history of Western art, exemplified by Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) and Manet’s Olympia (1863). Jungwirth engages with this lineage without directly reproducing its figures: in her paintings, only the sofa remains, stripped of human presence and transformed into a silent image capable of evoking a history of representations of the body and intimacy.
The absence of the figure, however, does not mean its disappearance. The body continues to be present through the traces of the artist’s gestures, which remain imprinted in the paint. The sofa thus becomes the place where historical memory, psychoanalytic suggestions, and the creative process converge, without the painting being reduced to a mere representation of the spaces visited.
The press preview of the exhibition is scheduled for Monday, November 23, 2026, at 12:00 p.m., while the opening reception will take place on Tuesday, November 24, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
 |
| Martha Jungwirth Enters Freud's Home: In Milan, the Couch Takes Center Stage in Her Paintings |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.