The artist Christa Dichgans has been painting for about five decades—she has remained loyal to her principle of the series and accumulation. An interview about toys, New York, and German Pop.

Schirn Magazin: Ms. Dichgans, you were a student in the class taught by Fred Thieler, a representative of Art Informel. Yet your manner of painting was figurative from the very beginning ...

Christa Dichgans: I've never painted abstract. My first paintings were strongly influenced by my husband at the time, Karl Horst Hödicke. They looked pretty wild--the problem was that after a while, I didn't believe in them myself, and so I started to paint all kinds of still lifes: "Niece with Doll," for example. But this theme became even more specific when I was in New York.

SM: On a scholarship, you moved to the capital of Pop Art with your husband and your son in 1966.CD: Exactly. And I liked to buy things there at the Salvation Army, where there were mountains of used toys. That was my theme to begin with. I was just delighted by what I saw there: piles of all kinds of toys that you otherwise rarely get to see as accumulations--that really inspired me. I absolutely need an object as a starting point, and if it is a doll, a stuffed animal, you can deal with it in a very different way. For example, I've never drawn a person according to a model; I was never interested in doing that. But when you suddenly have a toy, you can do anything with it: there is this fundamental distance to reality.

SM: So at the time, New York was something like an initial spark?CD: In a certain way, yes. There's something existential about New York! There are no intermediate solutions there; it goes either up or down. These impressions are also reflected in my New York painting [from the 1980s, Ed.]: almost Gothic, escalators going up and down. In Berlin it was downright cozy in comparison. In New York, you could either be successful--or unsuccessful; there was nothing in between. There's something so absolute about the city, and I saw it devastate some, even a woman who just stopped painting and became a secretary. I was really sad when I had to leave, but in retrospect it was good for me. Who knows that what have happened if I'd stayed there! No, that wouldn't have worked out.

SM: What influence did the American art market have on your works?

CD: The art dealer Allan Stone once came to my studio. He said: very nice paintings, but we can talk again when you have fifty of them! I'd managed to paint twelve in the space of a year. Today, there who women who master that. Cecily Brown, for example, a really good, excellent painter, who has been living in New York for a long time. Or Cindy Sherman with her strong stance--we simply don't have anything like that. These two are giants! And typically American: harder! More productive! Whereby both of them are also younger than I am. A new era had dawned there.

SM: You say that with admiration.CD: There are no excuses anymore. Today, women can decide everything themselves: whether they want to have children, live in a marriage--when I take a look at other regions, women are oppressed in almost every part of the world, which causes me to really worry. But in the West, in America and Europe: it's the best situation a woman can be in today!

SM: And back then, in the 1960s? How complicated was it to combine having a child with art?

CD: It was a challenge, of course, and I naturally feel guilty about it, what most parents probably do in retrospect. And my son not only had a mother but also a father who is an artist. Yet I always got it right, was always lucky. I immediately found a great preschool in New York with an integration program; the teachers carried the children around on all fours. That was inconceivable here! The Muppet Show had just been launched, and we didn't have it here. I'm still a big fan: Kermit in a trench coat! Simply great. America has a lot to do anyway with the fact that I love these subjects so much. A bit infantile somehow. But it always attracted me.

SM: You repeatedly took that up later: in 2010, you then put accumulations of toys to canvas alongside military equipment.CD: Yes, right; this theme developed differently time after time. It never let me go. At some point, toys became rubber animals, and I was particularly interested in being able to depict these smooth, polished surfaces with acrylic. New themes always went hand in hand with a new manner of painting. For me, the picture was always the most important thing, painting.

SM: Whereby one has the impression that one results in the other: the different subjects succeed each other like a logical consequence. There are no hard breaks.

CD: That's very important to me! Continuity! There is repeatedly this resorting to old things; new themes are always connected to the old ones. It is very important to me that you stick with your own problems, that you don't rid yourself of them. Such as during the period I worked as an assistant to Georg Baselitz: at some point I sat with Baselitz in the Paris Bar and told him about my search for a studio, and he said: "Then come to my university and paint there!" It wasn't until later that I realized what consequences that actually had: I was now suddenly Baselitz's assistant. It was a lot of fun; Baselitz is a wonderful professor and an artistic giant. I nevertheless applied everything he said to myself. A.R. Penck also had a big influence on me with his heterogeneous paintings. But ultimately, they always remain my own themes, my approach. By the way, I soon had to leave the university again; it was nice, and you get a lot of money--but it's also dangerous. I wanted to do my own things again.

SM: You've painted everything: toys, military equipment, money, heads, countries, buildings, everyday objects--always adhering to the principle of the series. How does the painting change when you paint accumulations?CD: Accumulation caused it to become more complicated, more remote, even more dramatic. In the beginning, I always painted accumulations of the same object: alarm clocks, fire departments, glasses. That multiplies everything, makes it into something entirely new. And then suddenly the things all came together and developed their own drama. Just like the war subjects: I'm no Dix that paints Expressionist war theaters. They are always still lifes, something constructed.

SM: You were married to the gallery owner Rudolf Springer for forty years. As an artist, was living with an art dealer a curse or a blessing?

CD: Difficult. However, my husband presented my paintings from the very beginning, which is a real achievement--exhibiting your own wife! They covered the walls, up to the ceiling, my stamp-sized paintings; and he sold them. I know several women who are married to art dealers, gallery owners, and I always find it somewhat sad that they don't do anything for their wives. I admit that it's difficult to exhibit works by one's own wife--but it must be frustrating when they don't do anything at all.

SM: What's it like seeing your own paintings from 1969 here in the exhibition "German Pop"?

CD: Strange, of course. But exciting as well: you don't otherwise have this look back when you stand in your studio every day. And this is something I do to this day--which is of course why I'm delighted that today one can look my works from then. But I find it equally as nice when people look at my current things.