You will hardly want to call it a crazy idea.

“Sparkling” is more likely to apply.

Not so much because the idea of ​​founding an association for the sole purpose of helping young artists after their studies was announced at a gala of the Lions Club Frankfurt-Mainmetropole in the Alte Oper.

Or the establishment, as the new Chairman of the Board of Management, Guido Hettinger, explains, had tax motives beyond the club members' enthusiasm for art.

But it has something, the idea, and if Künstlerhilfe Frankfurt didn't exist, it would have to be invented.

Christoph Schütte

Freelance author in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Even after 40 years, the model can be called, if not daring, at least selfless.

Some people in the club may secretly hope for a return that can be measured in cents and euros.

However, you shouldn't bet on them.

Because who knows whether the young draftsman or the video artist, the graduate of the Offenbach University of Design or the master student of the Frankfurt Städelschule, which the association has supported year after year with a scholarship, will actually make it in the end in the world of Art to succeed.

Whether they develop further or not, whether they can show their art in established galleries, art associations and museums or even in the big houses around the world.

Or whether, on the contrary, in one or two years they will throw in the towel in sustained frustration.

Well, it is the rule that you do not know that at the beginning of an artistic career.

Even with the first award winners of Künstlerhilfe Frankfurt, with Gerald Domenig or Manfred Stumpf, with Udo Koch, Monika Schwitte or Tobias Rehberger, one of six winners in 1992, this was by no means already determined.

And of course the board of trustees, which was made up of top-class members from the start, and which is responsible for the eight grants awarded annually and the award of the two studios in the Naxoshalle, did not know for sure.

Art as an investment

Some of them, such as Stumpf, Tamara Grcic and Martin Liebscher, now teach at renowned art schools themselves, are, like Rehberger, a Städelschule professor, on the board of trustees or, like Domenig, have just received the Austrian Art Prize. But you may not have heard from other scholarship holders for years. One or the other left the region or in the end even gave up art entirely. But where, if not in the field of art, will one still be able to recognize added value in failure? After all, art is not an object of speculation for Hettinger and Harald Meyer, his predecessor in the office of chairman. An investment, however, is: in artistic creativity.

In “the salt in the soup”, as the late director of the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art, Jean-Christophe Ammann, never tired of putting it in the course of his decades of work. A meal that everyone will happily enjoy at the end of the day. After all, according to Amman during his time as a member of the Board of Trustees, the support provided by Künstlerhilfe could set the course for the future. So help to take courage, not to give up, but to continue painting, sculpting and drawing.