What would a painter prince like Anton Burger say?

Or Jakob Fürchtegott Dielmann, Philipp Rumpf, Peter Burnitz, Nelson Kinsley and Louis Eysen?

About 160 years after the Kronberg painters' colony gradually took shape, the members of the Frankfurt Artists' Society and with them sculpture, painting, photography and drawing moved into the museum otherwise entirely dedicated to the work of the Kronberg painters in the Taunus?

Well, they would probably be quite happy with that.

And of course they exhibited together with Andreas Wald, Uli Mai and Clemens Maximilian Strugalla.

Christopher Schutte

Freelance author in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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It's true: the 19 current positions of the partners initially do not have much in common with the works of the numerous painters, mostly also from Frankfurt, who settled in the Taunus in the course of the 19th century in order to paint in front of nature.

What's more, unlike back then, the landscape still plays a role, for example in the work of Yuriy Ivashkevich, in Inge Helsper-Christiansen's highly picturesque "Clouds" and even in Martin Konietschke, who is primarily known as a sculptor.

But it is not the dominant theme.

But the variety of themes, styles and temperaments, as revealed by the Society's second appearance in the Museum Kronberger Malerkolonie after 2019, has been part of the program in Frankfurt since the Society was founded in 1857, a time when Kronbergers like Burger, Dielmann and Wilhelm Trübner also counted Johann David Passavant, Jacob von Steinle, the architect Paul Wallot and the Nazarene Philipp Veit among the protagonists of the association.

Wide range of media and styles

In the exhibition entitled “contemporary”, the spectrum is correspondingly broad, not only of the preferred media, but also of the styles. Strugalla’s figures carved from marble and red Main sandstone meet the wonderfully flattering abstractions of the Croissant student Michael Siebel in Lahn marble and Anröchter Dolomite.

Nicolas Vassiliev's still lifes meet Klaus Puth's illustrations with ink and reed pen on paper.

And the hyperrealism in the paintings of Joerg Eyfferth, who was born in 1957, finds an amazing photographic echo in Anna Schamschula's macro shots of poppies, columbines and bee friends.

As an exhibition, it always seems lastingly refreshing, but above all extremely lively.

And yet, in view of the age structure of the membership, the remaining shareholders have to consider how things should continue in the future.

Not that, as an artist, you have nothing more to say at 70, on the contrary.

The strongest impressions include the etchings and the enchantingly casual impressions of nature thrown onto paper with graphite and oil pencil by Uli Mai, who celebrated her 80th birthday last year.

But if the proportion of younger artists does not noticeably increase in the coming years, the tradition that has only just been established of inviting Frankfurters to Kronberg in the Villa Winter can hardly be maintained in the long term.

And one of the oldest artists' associations in Germany will not live to see its next milestone birthday.

Contemporary: The exhibition at the Museum Kronberger Malerkolonie, Heinrich-Winter-Straße 4a, can be seen until July 3 and is open on Wednesdays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays from 12 p.m .

Closed on Good Friday and May 1st.