Sonntagsmaler
("Sunday Painters")
04 March - 04 April
"A high, narrow slatted door, secured with barbed wire in the way it usually denies access to private bathing jetties and huts, indicates right at the entrance to the Kunstverein München what the new exhibition is about. A few steps further on in the entrance hall, one discovers the theme in a votive picture (painted in large format on the wall) in which 'a simple man from the Bavarian people...alhero of the Virgin Mary-Padrona Bavariae' betroths himself 'with the heartfelt request' to spare our beloved Bavarian land from private property and its consequences for the simple people...'.
Sunday painting on the one hand, section 14 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (socially binding property) and section 141, paragraph 3 (enjoyment of natural beauty) of the Bavarian Constitution on the other, not understood as an ironic programme of contrasts, but as a common interest.On the first floor, a lakeside environment is set up with 'no entry' signs nailed to fences, behind which are lake, alpine and forest pieces of the Sunday painters' guild, as on the walls in the large central room. In the same place, pinned to walls, grouped around a nowadays dirt-born Venus, documentation on Article 141.3: initiatives, actions and basic programmes of the federal government, the Bavarian state government, the parties, industries and associations. In addition, a current press release, a board for visitors to express their opinions and, on the back of the walls, a documentation with photos from the areas to which Article 141.3 applies: 'protection of the forest', 'nature conservation', 'water pollution', [...], an overview of an explosive and much-discussed topic".
(Donau-Kurier, Ingolstadt March 1971)
Fig:
[1] Votive picture on the wall, Wieland Sternagel 1971.
[2] Extract from Bildzeitung, Munich edition, March 1971