It's quiet on the banks of the Seine, the bridge at the Hotel du Nord is deserted, only one boat is passing under it, trees stretch up to the sky along the bank.

There is a peaceful evening atmosphere.

Yes, one thinks, yes, that's Paris.

Except that the drawing bathes the scene in unusual shades of blue.

Lots of different shades of blue.

Nina Bub

volunteer

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Scenes like this show an intimate relationship with Paris.

A kind of love affair that Jub Mönster can trace back to 1966.

He hitchhiked to the French capital for the first time when he was seventeen, and countless other visits followed.

In this way, he says, he was able to get to know many facets of the city.

And observed many changes - not all to the advantage, as he thinks.

scenes of silence

He liked it best in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, when the city radiated something that he described as “extremely exotic”.

Which may also be due to the fact that he was not traveling as a tourist.

Rather, he financed the stays with jobs, such as working in the mornings at a greengrocer.

Then he sat with butchers in the bistro and ate onion soup with them.

On the other hand, he says nothing about the wild times of left-wing youth.

And in his drawings he goes even further back in time, reviving the 1940s and 1950s.

He takes templates for the motifs from magazines and photo books, which he procures at the flea market.

Today he calls such pictures, some just escaping the cliché, “longing photos”.

And maybe they have become a kind of substitute memory for him.

In any case, he didn't take any photos at the time, it was simply too expensive for him.

In his drawings, Jub Mönster mainly captures scenes of silence: often deserted squares, where at best a couple is kissing in the light of a lantern.

He was particularly taken with the Place de Furstenberg.

For Mönster it is "one of the most beautiful places ever", which is why he dedicated six works to it, spanning different years and seasons.

Once he shows it after a rain shower: deserted again, the light of a lantern is reflected in the puddles, the trees that line the square cast long shadows in the twilight.

In other images, however, the sunlight breaks its way through the foliage and creates sparkling patterns on the ground.

There is nothing black about him

Jub Mönster draws with a ballpoint pen on formica panels, the white coating of which he first sands down so that the color sticks.

The fact that he uncovers the brown background of the plate in some places by working on it doesn't bother him at all.

Because then the shading looks almost like mold stains on old photos, which for him only underlines the romantic impression of the motifs.

At first glance and even from a short distance, Jub Mönster's drawings do indeed appear to be monochrome photographs; only on closer inspection are the pen's curves clearly discernible.

It is fascinating how realistically even the smallest of details are implemented, while on the other hand large, hardly painted areas still have such a recognizable structure that you think you can hear the snow crunching on the sidewalks under the feet of passers-by.

Above all, however, the lines thrown with articulated curves literally suck the viewer into the picture when he tries to follow the squiggles further and further.

For him, memories of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s are black and white, says Jub Mönster, and surprisingly does not explain this with the famous street photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Doisneau.

Completely unpoetic, he refers instead to the sandstone facades, which were covered with a dark patina due to coal heating and the lack of sandblasters.

Notre-Dame was dark grey, he recalls from earlier visits, downright black in some places.

But black is nothing with him.

Not even the night.

Everything remains bathed in blue - for Jub Mönster it is the color of longing.

The exhibition "Coming up blue"

with drawings by Jub Mönster is showing at the Frankfurt gallery Mühlfeld + Stohrer until October 21st.