Holsten Gate (Warhol)
| Holstentor (Holstentor in bright pink) |
|---|
| Andy Warhol , 1980 |
| Acrylic and screen printing on canvas |
| 110 x 130 cm |
|
Kulturstiftung Hansestadt Lübeck ( Kunsthalle St. Annen ), Lübeck Link to the picture |
| Holstentor (Holstentor in Orange) |
|---|
| Andy Warhol , 1980 |
| Acrylic and screen printing on canvas |
| 110 x 130 cm |
| Privately owned
Link to the picture |
| Holstentor (Holstentor in pale pink) |
|---|
| Andy Warhol , 1980 |
| Acrylic and screen printing on canvas |
| 110 x 130 cm |
| Privately owned
Link to the picture |
| Holstentor (Holstentor in red) |
|---|
| Andy Warhol , 1980 |
| Acrylic and screen printing on canvas |
| 110 x 130 cm |
| Privately owned
Link to the picture |
Holstentor is a screen printing series by the American pop art artist Andy Warhol from 1980. The pictures show the Lübeck Holstentor and are part of Warhol's series of works by German Monuments . A total of four pictures in the series were created in different color variations, which were shown to the public for the first time on the occasion of a Warhol exhibition in a Lübeck furniture store. One picture from the series with a pink Holsten Gate is now in the possession of the Lübeck museums .
Image description
All four pictures show the Holstentor seen from the west with the Holstentorplatz in the foreground and trees to the right and left of the gate. Some of the salt storage buildings can also be seen on the right edge of the picture . The four views are based on a photograph by Andy Warhol's friend Christopher Makos, who chose the angle of view of the gate, which at the time was mainly known from the back of the 50 DM note . Warhol later traced the contours and details of the building and the trees with a free hand on a photographic template from Makos. Then the colored pictures were screen-printed with acrylic paint on canvas. The four variants differ partly in the cutout, but mainly in the color. The large, bright fields of color appear to have been arranged in a collage . Depending on the picture, Warhol used a different shade of green for the foreground with the lawn and varied the sky in different shades of blue. In between, the Holsten Gate dominates as a luminous surface in a different color.
Creation of the pictures
The four pictures with the Holstentor motif belong to a series of pictures of German buildings that Andy Warhol created in 1980 at the suggestion of his Bonn gallery owner Hermann Wünsche. Wishing, who was friends with Warhol, had already arranged several commissions for the pop art artist and, for example, organized the portrait meeting with ex-Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1976 . The series of images with architectural views called German Monuments or Monumenta Germaniae include the Holsten Gate, the Cologne Cathedral , Hamburg Michel , Berlin Reichstag building and the outer bailey of Drachenburg Castle near Königswinter . What is striking in this group is the motif of the outer bailey, which is not as well known as the other buildings. In 1980, Drachenburg Castle belonged to the entrepreneur Paul Spinat , who was well-known with wishes and who invited Warhol as a guest.
The image of Lübeck's landmark was also created through the mediation of Hermann Wünsche, whom Warhol occasionally called Hermann the German . The Lübeck furniture dealer Heinrich (called Heiner) Reese, who had a business connection with wishes, had set up an art gallery in his shop for high-quality furniture and had already shown works by Salvador Dali there, for example . Desires suggested Reese hold a Warhol exhibition there. The only condition of the gallery owner was that Reese had to buy one of the pictures shown. Around 150 works by Warhol were on view in Heiner Reese's furniture store, including pictures from the Flowers , Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Beuys series . Warhol made the four pictures with the Holstentor motif especially for this exhibition. To this end, Warhol's photographer Christopher Makos traveled to Lübeck in advance to photograph the Hanseatic city's landmark. The photos of the Holsten Gate later served as a template for the paintings.
On November 13, 1980 Andy Warhol personally came to Lübeck for the opening of the exhibition. Accompanied by Christopher Makos, Warhol first attended a reception in the Lübeck town hall , then was invited to a meal in the venerable Schiffergesellschaft , before the exhibition finally opened in the furniture store. There, the pictures were not exhibited in gallery rooms in the narrower sense, but rather hung between the furniture and above the sofas, rather like a museum. This commercial presentation of his works did not seem to pose a problem for Warhol. From the four pictures with the Holsten Gate that were on public display for the first time on this occasion, furniture dealer Heiner Reese finally chose the motif with the bright pink gate. Despite the great reception in the Hanseatic city, Warhol did not mention the trip to Lübeck in his diaries.
For the Zeitgeist exhibition shown two years later in Berlin , Warhol again created pictures based on German architectural motifs. In addition to views of the Berlin Olympic Stadium, this series included pictures based on the architectural design by Friedrich Gilly for a monument to Frederick the Great . Shortly before the end of his life, Warhol took up again a German monument as a pictorial object with the postcard view of Neuschwanstein Castle . On behalf of the Munich Reinsurance Company , several pictures of the same motif were again created in different colors.
Whereabouts of the pictures
After the exhibition in Lübeck in 1980, a painting of the four versions of the Holsten Gate remained in the possession of the furniture dealer Heiner Reese in accordance with the contract. For some time he made the painting available on loan to the Kunsthalle St. Annen until it was acquired for the Lübeck museums in 2008 with funds from the Friedrich Bluhme and Else Jebsen Foundation . The other three image versions are in private hands. In 2008 the Rudolf Budja gallery offered a version of the picture with the Holsten Gate in orange for 3.6 million euros at an art fair in Moscow. It is unclear whether a buyer was found for this sum. On December 2, 2010, the Cologne auction house Van Ham auctioned the painting version with the Holsten Gate in pale pink for 611,500 euros. The previous owners were the Hermann Wünsche Gallery in Bonn, the Rudolf Budja Gallery in Salzburg / Vienna / Miami and a private collection not named in Miami. The new buyer remained unknown. The fourth version of the picture, with the Holsten Gate in red, was auctioned on February 7, 2001 in the London branch of the Christie's auction house, but was not bought on that occasion. The current whereabouts of the picture is unknown.
literature
- Kynaston MacShine (Ed.): Andy Warhol Retrospective . Exhibition catalog Museum Ludwig, Prestel, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7913-0918-8 .
- Thorsten Rodiek (Ed.): Donated - donated - bought: Art after 1945 from the collections of the Museum for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck . Museum for Art and Cultural History Lübeck, Lübeck 2003, ISBN 3-936406-07-3 .
- Hermann Wünsche, Christopher Makos: Warhol, made in Germany . Gallery wishes, Bonn 1989.
- Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett: The Diary . German translation of The Andy Warhol diaries . Droemer Knaur, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-426-26429-3 .
Web links
- Description of the painting in Lübeck on the website of the Museum Association Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg e. V.
- Kathrin Otto: Andy Warhol brings Pop Art to Lübeck . Article on the website of Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR)
- Andy Warhol in the Lübeck furniture store in front of two Holstentor motifs, photography from the archive of the magazine Der Spiegel
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sophie von Maltzahn: Andy Warhols Willy Brandt at Christie's , article in the newspaper Die Welt on December 15, 2007
- ^ Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett: The Diary. P. 356.
- ↑ Kynaston MacShine: Andy Warhol retrospective. Pp. 362-363.
- ↑ Kynaston MacShine: Andy Warhol retrospective. Appendix p. 8.
- ↑ Warhol's "Holstentor" remains in Lübeck , article in the Hamburger Abendblatt from August 27, 2008
- ^ "While the Rudolf Budja Galerie offered up a selection of works by Andy Warhol, with a price list that topped off at € 3.6 million for Holstentor (1980), part of the artist's" German Monuments "series." In Kate Sutton: Moscow Express . Online article at http://www.artnet.com/
- ↑ Information on the sale of the painting version with the Holsten Gate in pale pink on the website of the Van Ham auction house
- ↑ Information on the planned auction of the picture with the Holsten Gate in red on the website www.artvalue.fr/ . There the painting is incorrectly labeled Die Vorburg .