As she turns 65 on July 17, DW looks at how the German Chancellor has been depicted by artists. Across nearly 15 years in high office, Angela Merkel has graced everything from "Time" magazine to city street art walls.
Image: Elizabeth Peyton
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In the eye of the beholder: portraits of Angela Merkel
From power player to hipster, artists have depicted the German chancellor in diverse and often endearing ways. Indeed, Angela Merkel's emergence as an iconic pop art subject illustrates her rising global renown.
Image: Elizabeth Peyton
Political evolution
Photographer Herlinde Koelbl immortalized the German chancellor in her series "Traces of Power" — in addition to former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former foreign minister Joschka Fischer. Photographing and interviewing the politicians for the project, Koelbl's long-term study examined how years in office transforms people.
Image: Herlinde Koelbl
The pop icon
US artist Elizabeth Peyton portrayed the German chancellor for a profile in "Vogue" magazine in 2017. Peyton's stylized depiction of a younger Merkel carried on a theme of presenting strong women characters in her portraits that have also included Michelle Obama, Camille Claudel and Frida Kahlo. Peyton was inspired for this portrait by hundreds of photos of the Chancellor taken across 30 years.
Image: Elizabeth Peyton
The humanitarian
"We see images of her where she can appear to be a quite bland and almost cold person; but what I wanted to get across was her humanitarian stance," said Northern Irish artist Colin Davidson of his Merkel portrait for "Time's" 2015 Person of the Year cover. That year, the chancellor dealt with "two existential crises," wrote "Time" — Europe's debt crisis and a mass influx of refugees.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Time Magazine
Signs of exhaustion
This drawing by Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout portrays the Chancellor with red lips and a tired, inscrutable gaze. It was actually acquired by the contemporary art collection of the Federal Republic of Germany, which was started in 1970 in Bonn. Van Lieshout said he only needed an hour to finish his portrait and that the "mouth turned out to be very beautiful."
Image: Erik van Lieshout
Revisited by a former US president
Angela Merkel has not only inspired renowned artists, but hobby painters as well, including George W. Bush. The former US president — who had never lifted a paintbrush in his life — set out to paint a series of 30 world leaders, among them the German Chancellor, for a 2015 show called "The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/L. W. Smith
Political street art
Art begins on the street: In the tradition of the murales — South American murals with political statements — Italian street art artist Jupiterfab depicted Angela Merkel geting close and personal with the former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on a building wall in Athens.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/G. Georgiou
Satirical artworks
Political art can also hang in the museum: Here, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, donning a Napoleon hat, sits on the motherly lap of a naked Angela Merkel. The British artist and satirist Kaya Mar prefers to focus on politicians in his motifs; he has also portrayed Theresa May, Donald Trump and the Pope in satirical contexts.
Image: picture-alliance/Photoshot/B. Strenske
In dialogue
Bulgarian art students decorated the walls of buildings in the village of Staro Zhelezare — initially with portraits of the inhabitants. Later, there were also politicians who seemed to be in dialogue with the locals, like Chancellor Merkel. The walls have meanwhile also been painted with copies of artworks from New York's Museum of Modern Art.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/H. Rusev
One among many
Some sculptures of the chancellor are deliberately provocative: "European Citizenship" by Alexander Nikolic and Michael Kalivoda shows a defecating Merkel; while Peter Lenk's relief "Global Players" shows her and other German politicians naked and engaged in sexual play. Unoffensive in comparison, Georg Korner's installation "Transit" (pictured) includes Merkel among 2,600 figures.
Image: Courtesy Georg Korner
Hipster
In his series of images "Hipstory," Israeli illustrator Amit Shimoni portrays the powerful and influential as young hipsters. Trump, for instance, wears a Hawaiian shirt, while Obama has dreadlocks. Merkel is among them, with dark lipstick, a nose piercing and a felt black hat.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Kappeler
Caricature
New wrinkles around her eyes and mouth have been appearing in cartoonists'
depictions of her, too. The German chancellor has been caricatured on countless occasions in newspapers worldwide — demonstrating that her influence and power go way beyond the country's borders.
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When Chancellor Angela Merkel presumably resigns her post in 2021 at the latest, she will join the Gallery of German Chancellor portraits in the capital. But it won't be the first time her likeness has appeared on canvas. As Merkel turns 65 on July 17, the milestone will be accompanied by ever more images of a popular yet demure leader whose inscrutable gaze had been captured by artists, cartoonists and photographers the world over.
Artistic homage — and critique
When Chanceller Merkel was voted "Person of the Year" by Time magazine in 2015 due to her humanitarian stance on the refugee crisis — the publication also dubbed her the "Chancellor of the Free World" — the cover image was an oil painting by Irish artist Colin Davidson.
It was a flattering depiction of a morally principled leader at a time of great upheaval, and was followed in 2017 artist Elizabeth Peyton's finely hued portrait of the Chancellor as a younger woman in Vogue magazine.
The fact that politicians can be stylized into modern icons in art was proven by the iconic portrait of former president Barack Obama by artist Kehinde Wiley — the first African American to paint an official presidential portrait.
In a bad light: An anti-austerity protester in Greece in 2017 holds a placard with a cartoon of an authoritarian Chancellor Merkel reading: "Don't forget to give up your home, too." Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/T. Stavrakis
The Chancellor has amply demonstrated her affinity for art , not only as a regular visitor to operas and the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, but her willingness to sit for photographers including Herlinde Koelbl and Andreas Mühe.
But artists have also taken a critical look at her political choices — especially in the debate over Germany's handling of the EU financial crisis and the imposition of harsh austerity measures in countries like Greece.
Click through the picture gallery above to see how diverse artists have immortalized the German Chancellor.
