The earliest drawing in this exhibition is also the largest (in every respect): on the upper floor of the Caricatura Museum, an umbrella-armed Karl Marx fights a meter wide against a shower of banana peels.

Of course, this striking motif dates back to 1990, when German satirists couldn't poking fun at the longing for tropical fruit in the GDR, which was said to be conducive to German reunification.

Not even Klaus Stuttmann.

One can forgive him;

he was still young in the caricaturing business at the time, he had only just gotten into it.

Before that, the studied art historian had worked as an autodidact in the graphic arts trade.

What comic art then gained through Stuttmann's decision to use the press drawing,

Andrew Plathaus

Responsible editor for literature and literary life.

  • Follow I follow

It begins with the Marx motif, a veritable stroke of genius, which unfortunately has not become as well known as Roland Beier's portrait of the shrugging founder of scientific socialism, created in the same year and captioned "I'm sorry, boys.

It was just an idea I had.

.

."

Beier, who was born in 1955 and was six years younger than Stuttmann, not only had experience with caricatures ahead of his colleague, but also his Eastern descent.

Mokant about Marx was obviously more attractive from a native of Meissen than from a native of Frankfurt (on the Main).

That's why Stuttmann has now brought this exhibition to his hometown and in a house that enjoys the best reputation in the caricature genre.

What Stuttmann brings to the Caricatura Museum

As long as there is still a representative from the founding octet of the New Frankfurt School, who honors the Caricatura Museum, which arose from this comic tradition (and is richly stocked with their works), at the opening ceremonies, this house will not be defeated.

Now four out of eight are already dead, but when Pit Knorr appears like this time, everything is alive and well, especially the memories of the deceased, and one can look forward to the future, in which the most recent acquisitions of this municipal institution - leaves by Greser & Lenz, Bernd Pfarr, Franziska Becker, Ernst Kahl - will be supplemented.

The initially required connection to Frankfurt for the museum holdings is now relaxing, and it is reasonable to round them off with works from the “Titanic” environment;

and possibly also Stuttmann,

The caricaturist grew up – you can hear it – in Stuttgart, but he has lived in Berlin since 1970, where his most loyal customer, the “Tagesspiegel”, appears.

Over the decades, Stuttmann has acquired dozens of customers - mainly through his ingenuity, which allows him to take up several topics every day in a caricature-like manner (and often with a selection of ideas for the same subject).

In addition, Stuttmann has an attractive style, because his figures are drawn more likeably round than grotesquely distorted, and last but not least, everything has long been done digitally with him.

That is why the Frankfurt exhibition mainly contains printouts of his caricatures;

only from the period before the turn of the millennium are original drawings represented (the Marx is also a print).

Merkel became his leitmotif.

But also his personal motif?

Stuttmann became known above all for – how could a German caricaturist have avoided it?

– countless Angela Merkel motifs.

Much more interesting, however, is the continuity with which he makes himself and his own working conditions the subject of intolerant times.

Incidentally, also in the context of dealing with Merkel.

A caricature from 2018 became famous, in which the artist received a call from the Chancellor at his desk that he was now forbidden from caricaturing.

The background to this motive, however, was not some concrete annoyance about their portrayal, but the reform of data storage law at the time.

When Stuttmann sent her a selection of his Merkel caricatures a few months ago, he received a friendly card back: she wished him good new faces.

The draftsman's earliest self-portrait in the show is an etching from the 1990s, and it already shows the great strength of the later works: the strikingness with which Stuttmann draws.

Here his own head with incredulous stare eyes like a vulnerable planet in a dark universe, through which a rocket is heading towards him - not one that carried a peaceful space mission, but clearly an explosive device.

Own fear is a constant theme at Stuttmann.

Admitting you as a caricaturist takes courage.

Will Stuttmann block his way into the museum because of the digital nature of his work?

At the opening, he broke a lance for his peers, the press cartoonists: so far, they have only rarely been recognized as "museable".

The “Statements” exhibition, with around three hundred caricatures sorted strictly chronologically (and a few irrelevant accessories), shows that even with a large number of reproductions, state can be made – especially when the state is ridiculed.

And when there is so much to discover in the work of a chronicler of the years we know.

However, these are sometimes only made recognizable through Klaus Stuttmann's pictures.

Klaus Stuttmann – Statements.

In the Caricatura Museum Frankfurt am Main;

until October 3rd.

No catalogue, but the extended edition of “My Merkel picture book” was recently published by Schaltzeit Verlag.

It costs 24.90 euros.