Germany: Angry At The World

With the Communists out of power, painter Angela Hampel ought to be delighted. Far from it. Like many artists, Hampel, 34, is “disappointed in what has happened since November. We never expected the greed and scrabbling that we see now.” In her Dresden studio, which is cluttered with scythes, sickles, knives, spikes and other graphic symbols of violence, hang pictures of suffering female figures. It is women, she predicts darkly, who will bear the brunt of a changing society, and her art is about the “hopelessness of their condition.” This month in a Dresden gallery, Hampel opened a new exhibit of her work, and, she says, it is very, very angry.