Africa House Freiberg
The Afrika-Haus Freiberg is a museum for new African art in Freiberg am Neckar .
concept
The Afrikahaus houses a large number of works of new African art from 1920 onwards. All geographical regions of Africa and a wide range of art styles are represented. The architectural design of the outdoor area follows the model of the Umuzi , the kraal of the Ndebele .
The exhibition also shows the roots of the new African art in the old cultural customs of Africa. It shows connections to the cults of animism, to ancestral and fertility cults and to the mystical ideas of magic, mask cults, witchcraft and spirit cults .
The Afrikahaus, which is also a place of personal exchange with African artists, is intended to promote intercultural exchange, help avoid failed cultural apartheid ideas and instead attempt to venture into new artistic dimensions - according to the museum's founder, Arthur Benseler.
Artistic themes
Outdoor sculptures and paintings
At the entrance to the garden, two tall, slender Masai figures made of mahogany welcome visitors and guide them to colorful sculptures made of cement and concrete in the side part of the garden. In West Africa these concrete figures are part of the still living cult of the dead: They are used for the ceremony of the second burial . Occasionally, they are also used for advertising purposes.
There is also a colorful group of figures, the voodoo pantheon with the deities Legba and Zangbeto , who sit in the company of two lions in judgment of a sinner. The group, created by Benin-based artist Cyprien Tokoudagba , was originally shown at the 1989 Magiciens de la Terre exhibition at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris . Tokoudagba won the Fondation Afrique en Créations prize in Paris in 1993 . The figure of Legba fell victim to vandalism in the summer of 2006. Her large phallus may have offended and been cut off.
The walls in the outside area and parts of the facade are painted with geometric ornaments in bright, bright colors. These facade pictures are painted by the women of the Ndebele in South Africa and called by them as Amagama , pictorial messages. The ornaments originally come from an older art form: the production of jewelry and parts of clothing, for example breast plates, forehead, arm, waist and ankle bands, from colored beads. When the Ndebele settled down, the colors and shapes of these pieces of jewelry were transferred to the house facades.
Panel painting from the Congo
The Congolese panel painting has its origin in the traditional house painting of this country. Since this art, attached to the clay walls of the building, was exposed to the weather, it had to be constantly renewed. With the exception of a relatively small number of photographic recordings, hardly any evidence of this art has survived.
Around 1930 Europeans, namely the Belgian colonial official Georges Thiry, took a liking to this colorful, ornamental, and less often figurative, art. They encouraged African artists such as Djilatendo (actually Tschelatendu , ie stone throwers ) to produce their works in a more permanent form, namely as watercolors on paper.
The Africa House shows a number of examples of this art since the 1920s. In addition to Djilatendo, who was later awarded by the Académie Française , the artists D'Ekibondo and Albert Lubaki from that period are represented.
From the 1940s onwards, a number of works from the Académie de l'art populaire congolais school founded by Pierre Romain Desfossés are represented: Pili-Pili Mulongby painted poetic landscapes and animals in finely coordinated colors. Bela Borkémas developed her own finger painting technique. By dabbing on the color with his fingertips, he achieved effects that are reminiscent of works from European pointillism . Pictures by Mwenze Kibwanga show fantastic and dramatic scenes, for example birds of prey with huge wings or fights between humans and animals.
Another painting school was established around 1950 on the initiative of the French painter Pierre Lodz, who was interested in ethnology. Representatives of this school can see some of the seemingly surrealistic works by Jacques Zigoma as well as ornamental-figurative pictures by François Thango in Freiberg .
Square painting from Tanzania
The farmer's son Eduardo Saidi Tingatinga earned his living in the city of Dar es Salaam by painting memories from his homeland, village scenes, animals and plants with bicycle lacquer on square, approx. 60 cm × 60 cm large hardboard. He sold these pictures at the supermarket. His cousin January Linda initially assisted him, later Linda picked up a brush herself. In 1971 aid workers from Scandinavia organized an exhibition of these painters in the National Museum of Dar es Salaam. This led to a great sales success, through which a whole generation of young artists was inspired to paint. The art of Tingatinga thus became the starting point for an entire painting direction, the Tingatinga school .
The exhibition in Freiberg mainly shows works from the early days of this art movement, including 13 works by Tingatinga himself.
Ebony sculptures
The museum displays some intricately carved ebony sculptures by Makonde artists. The dance of the Shetani by Hossein Anangangola, an airy, multi-openwork network of human bodies, arms and legs , is particularly elaborate and artful . No less complex and artful is the slave boat , probably a group work by artists not known by name, a representation of captured African slaves and their Arab overseers on a boat carved from a solid ebony trunk, also with multiple openings. A comparable work can be found in the collection in the granary of the Heiligkreuztal monastery .
The excited man by Clementi Matei is an example of a more abstract figurative representation from the field of Makonde art.
Painting from Senegal
In Senegal, which became independent in 1960, the first president Léopold Sédar Senghor promoted an active cultural policy from the beginning, which was intended to heal the consequences of colonialism and promote a renaissance of African art. Starting from the École des Arts de Dakar , founded in 1959 , a wide range of artistic activities emerged, which was reflected, for example, in painting, graphics, sculpture and the manufacture of tapestries. This officially sponsored art emphasized the decorative element very strongly.
After the Senghor era, from 1980, young artists found ways to a freer visual language. Reverse glass painting plays a prominent role in this art - a variation of the French sous verre known as Souweres in the Wolof language . The Freiberg Museum mainly shows such reverse glass paintings. Works by Souleymane Keita and Fodé Camara represent modern, abstract Senegalese art. On the other hand, there are works that take up and depict topics from the country's narrative literature, for example fables and religious motifs, often bypassing the ban on figurative representation in Islam. Examples of this art represented in Freiberg are works by Gora M'Bengue and Alexis N'Gom.
Stone sculptures from Zimbabwe
From the 1960s, based on the founding of the Rhodesian National Gallery, founded in 1957, and the Tengetenge artist community , founded in 1966, stone carving flourished in Zimbabwe - the country's official cultural policy speaks of Zimbabwe stone sculptures . This art achieved its international breakthrough with a large exhibition in 1971 at the Musée Rodin in Paris. In Germany, it was presented in an exhibition in 1994 in the Palmengarten in Frankfurt . Often used material of the Zimbabwean stonemasonry is dark green to black, in many cases smoothly polished serpentine .
The Freiberg Afrikahaus shows some examples - impressive, stylized representations of faces or spirits, as well as the sculpture of a lion by the artists Stephen Mtengwa, Henry Munyaradzi, Josia Mwanzi and NDale Wilo. One is particularly proud of a sculpture by the prominent artist Richard MTeki, a highly stylized representation of a human head, the so-called spade head .
history
On August 14, 1957, a VW Beetle set off on a major Africa tour in Kirchheim am Neckar. She went south through the western part of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope and from there back through the eastern part of Africa. The tour lasted a good year. One of the two inmates was Arthur Benseler (1925-2011) from Freiberg am Neckar.
After this first trip, Arthur Benseler undertook further study visits and trips lasting several months. These produced an abundance of material, so that Benseler decided to build a house in order to be able to accommodate everything appropriately. This house - home to an Africa art collection, an Africa picture archive, an Africa music archive and an Africa library - was built between 1969 and 1970. At that time, Benseler himself did not think of any kind of founding act, and the name Afrikahaus did not come from him either, but became popular in the local vernacular, so that it eventually became an official name.
From the 1970s onwards, it became a center for Africa-related culture and adult education in southwest Germany. In addition to exhibitions of African art, concerts and seminars were organized, and it became a contact point for personal exchanges with artists and other personalities from Africa. Between 1970 and 1995, around 150 seminars with more than 700 working evenings and around 20,000 participants took place in the Afrikahaus.
The Afrikahaus Freiberg was one of the first places in Europe where original African Kwela music could be heard: in 1972 the Kachamba Brothers' Band of Daniel and Donald Kachamba from Malawi were guests. Together with their band member, the ethnologist Gerhard Kubik , they gave a concert in the Freiberg Nikolauskirche that evening. Of the many exhibitions that took place in the Afrikahaus, the Makonde exhibition from 1988 is particularly noteworthy. It was then taken over by the Musée National des arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie in Paris.
One of the prominent visitors to the house was Bishop Naumu of Cameroon, who - himself a musician and composer - sought contact with the Kachamba brothers there. The Ghana's ambassador at the time was so impressed by the Africa House that he decided to recreate it as a retirement home in his home country - he asked Arthur Benseler to give him the building plans.
The Afrikahaus is currently being looked after and managed by the Afrikahaus working group , the city of Freiberg and the Benseler family. For the time after his death, Artur Benseler left it to the city of Freiberg am Neckar to continue in his favor.
In May 2019, the city of Freiberg am Neckar was awarded the municipal award African Diaspora Living Legend for its commitment to the Afrikahaus .
Africa festival
Every year in June there is an Africa Festival in and around the Afrikahaus. There are musical performances, African food, dance and tours of the exhibition.
literature
- Arthur Benseler: Do you know Swabian Africa? Schwätzle and Spätzle with compatriots in the Black Continent , Gerlingen 1977.
- Helke Kammerer-Grothaus: sculptures made of ebony - art of the Makonde. Museum in the Kornhaus Kloster Heiligkreuztal. Marion and Hans Eberhard Aurnhammer collection , Heiligkreuztal 1991. ISBN 3-92131-245-0
- Jutta Ströter-Bender: Art from Africa: Modern square painting from Tanzania. , Merseburg Cultural History Museum, 1994.
- Museum für Völkerkunde, Frankfurt (Ed.): Contemporary Fine Art in Senegal , Frankfurt am Main 1989.
credentials
- ↑ The presentation in this article follows, unless other sources are expressly stated: Helke Kammerer-Grothaus, Arthur Benseler: Afrika-Haus Freiberg. Umuzi Collection for New African Art . Self-published, available at the museum and the cultural department of the city of Freiberg am Neckar
- ↑ Helke Kammerer-Grothaus, Arthur Benseler: Africa House Freiberg. Umuzi Collection for New African Art , p. 68
- ↑ Portrait of the artist Mwenze Kibwanga ( memento of February 10, 2001 in the Internet Archive ), in French, visited on February 18, 2007
- ↑ portrait of the artist François Thango ( Memento of 3 April 2012 at the Internet Archive ), in French, visited on February 18, 2007
- ^ Portrait of Eduardo Saidi Tingatinga , in English, visited on February 18, 2007
- ^ Website of Fodé Camara , visited on July 3, 2012
- ^ Palmengarten Frankfurt: Modern African Art. The stone sculptors from Zimbabwe , exhibition catalog, 1994
- ^ Private collection, Wild: Portrait of Henry Munyaradzi , visited on February 19, 2007
- ↑ portrait of NDale Wilo ( Memento of 17 January 2013 Web archive archive.today ), visited on 19 February 2007; Link no longer available
- ↑ Portrait of Richard MTeki ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , visited on February 19, 2007
- ↑ Donald Kachamba et son ensemble, CD Concert Kwela , LDX 274 972 CM 212, University of Malawi, Zomba 1992
- ↑ Beate Volmari: Prize for the legacy of Artur Benseler . In: Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung . Ludwigsburg May 25, 2019.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 56 '16 " N , 9 ° 10' 45.9" E