5 
The Cry of Pain from the Beleaguered Stratosphere (fig.15). A proboscis-shaped, malevolent
‘Nosolite’ in Conspiracy (fig.16) and Defence Against Nosolites (fig.17). Other than in its
malevolent incarnation, the ‘petal’ form often acts as a kind of shell, or a dynamic counterpoint to
stable, protective womb- or seed-like shapes, as in Liberated Soul (fig.18), Spherical Meteorite
(fig.19) and Towards the Light (fig.20).
    The artist uses gouache in most of the extant works. She ably balances linear description,
fields of colour and graphic hatching. The overall result is one of visual clarity, even as the viewer
is confronted with visionary forms that often verge on abstraction and whose iconography comes
not from mundane experience, but unconscious depths. Two exquisite pencil drawings, titled Sun
Mountains (Sonnenbergen) (figs.21, 22) reveal the full sensitivity of Köhler’s mark-making. At once
bold, free and precise, these serpentine abstractions share an affinity (there is no direct influence)
with some of the final, tiny drawings made by another great German visionary artist, Franz Marc in
his sketchbooks in the final weeks before he was killed in 1916 at the Battle of Verdun.
Colin Rhodes
March 2021

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