The step of the century

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. Details should be given on the talk page. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

Bronze sculpture Jahrhundertschritt 2017 in the courtyard of the museum Barberini in Potsdam
The same sculpture in its previous location, the courtyard of the coach stable in Potsdam

The Step of the Century is a bronze sculpture created by Wolfgang Mattheuer in 1984. It is considered to be one of the most important works of art in the GDR at the time of the division of Germany and is a parable of the turmoil of the 20th century.

Description and interpretation

Motive development

Wolfgang Mattheuer's work includes paintings, works on paper, prints and, since 1970, also sculptures and objects. The vast majority of his pictures are so-called recreational pictures and include still lifes, portraits and landscapes. The so-called problem pictures became more important: In them Mattheuer takes up mythological, biblical, historical and metaphorical motifs, combines them, expands their context and uses these pictures to create astute, sometimes cynical comments on current events. Well-known examples of this are his pictures of the fratricide of Cain and Abel , the Icarus figures, the refugees and people falling, one of his most famous pictures is Behind the 7 Mountains . Again and again Mattheuer addresses the split between good and bad, between “greatness and misery” ( Blaise Pascal ).

In the 1980s Mattheuer was to develop the most significant parable in retrospect for his entire work, his own mythological figure - the step of the century . In fact, the basic dialectical idea of ​​this tearing figure is already laid out in Mattheuer's earliest pictures. In the picture Aggression (1981) this ominous figure appears for the first time in the painterly work: It consists only of the extremities - one arm stretched out in the Hitler salute finds its counterweight in the booted leg marked in red, the other, left arm is the communist fist clenched, the right leg stomps forward, naked and wide. In the middle of the figure, however, there is no body or head to be seen, only diffuse fog. This is followed by pictures with the titles Alptraum (1982) and Verlorene Mitte (1982). Mattheuer writes about this figure: “A bare leg, reaching far. A boot leg, a black arm with a healing gesture shooting from the disembodied middle and a fist on the raised second arm make a raging figure out of four extremities. (…) What's this? Helpless rage? (...) chaos? Resurrection? Martial law? Loss of the middle! "

In the garden of his Reichenbacher house, Mattheuer works on the sculptural implementation of the figure, which was planned from the beginning. In 1984 the 2.5 m high plaster model was completed - it was followed by castings in iron and bronze and finally a 5 m high specimen, which is now in the Barberini Museum.

reception

In 1985 the painted plaster version was exhibited to the public for the first time, at the 11th Leipzig District Art Exhibition. The Moritzburg State Gallery in Halle and the collector Peter Ludwig each commissioned a bronze cast. The audience reacted to the work on display with astonishment and great sympathy. The response was even greater a few years later when a bronze cast of the century step was shown at the Xth and last art exhibition of the GDR in Dresden . The figure was chosen as the most important work of art in the exhibition, especially because a political discourse was still being conducted as a substitute for the fine arts and literature.

Mattheuer said of his sculpture: "This nightmare figure, as embodied absurdity, is 'that dichotomy between the yearning spirit and the disappointing world', it is '... homesickness for unity, this fragmented universe, and the contradiction that connects the two' ( A. Camus) and which all too often discharges into aggression and destructiveness, as a centrifugal force that tears the individual apart. No attempt at self-discovery succeeds anymore. " Eduard Beaucamp , long-time columnist of ZEIT and advocate especially of the Leipzig School artists, writes:" This paradoxical metaphor of the century is an aggressively fleeing end-time figure who has lost its body and its 'center' a scornful, bitter swan song for modern dictatorships. "

The message of the century step was also recognized in the area of ​​the old federal states . In 1988 the exhibition Zeitvergleich '88-13 painters from the GDR brought together a whole series of paintings and plastic works by well-known GDR artists, including Mattheuer's step of the century . A journalist judges: “In a sense the symbol of the exhibition […] is a single bronze sculpture. Relationally placed on the threshold between the two rooms, Wolfgang Mattheuer's 1984 step of the century creates the leap from east to west. "

Step of the century: iron cast in front of the House of History in Bonn

Sites

Iron cast in front of the GrundkreditBank (now Volksbank) in Berlin

The catalog raisonné of the sculptures and objects includes two differently painted iron casts and four bronze casts. Of these, three are painted differently and one is unpainted.

Their locations are:

In October 2017 the city council of Reichenbach in Vogtland decided to buy the last unsold copy (bronze, unpainted) and to display it in public. The Solbrigplatz is intended as the installation site . The purchase price is € 180,000 and is to be financed by donations.

In 2006, a painted bronze of the century step enlarged to five meters (catalog raisonné No. WV / S 47) was to be erected on the outside area in front of the Reichstag in Berlin. This was never realized. Acquired by Hasso Plattner in the meantime , it was temporarily displayed in the courtyard of the House of Brandenburg-Prussian History in Potsdam from September 16, 2012 until the art gallery he planned was built. It has been in the passageway of the Barberini Museum in Potsdam since June 2016 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Romanus: On Mattheuer's group of works “Century Step” . In: Dieter Brusberg (Ed.): Ostwind. Five German painters from the Grundkreditbank collection . Berlin 1997, p. 151–156 (more detailed analysis of the century step theme).
  2. ↑ Stefanie Michels: Wolfgang Mattheuer. Images as a message. Catalog raisonné of the paintings. Ed .: Stefanie Michels. Edition Galerie Schwind, Leipzig 2017, ISBN 978-3-932830-71-6 , p. 249 .
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Mattheuer: Pictures as a message - message of pictures . Ed .: Ursula Mattheuer-Neustädt. Faber and Faber Verlag, 2002, ISBN 978-3-928660-85-3 , p. 84/85 .
  4. ↑ Bernd Lindner: The torn century. Retrieved May 4, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Mattheuer: Pictures as a message - the message of pictures . Ed .: Ursula Mattheuer-Neustädt. 1997, p. 124 .
  6. ^ Eduard Beaucamp: Citizens of the world in a poisonous province . In: Stefanie Michels (Ed.): Wolfgang Mattheuer. Images as a message . Edition Galerie Schwind, Leipzig 2017, p. 19 .
  7. ↑ Andrea Hildenstock: Symbolism and young savages . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . September 13, 1988.
  8. ↑ https://www.freipresse.de/LOKALES/VOGTLAND/REICHENBACH/ Jahrhundertstufe-Gruenes-Licht- fuer -Plastik- Ankauf-artikel10022849.php "Century Step ": Green light for plastic purchase www.freipresse.de. October 11, 2017, accessed February 6, 2018.
  9. ↑ http://www.pnn.de/potsdam-kultur/1091507/