WOLFGANG BELTRACCHI
"Im Dunkel der Wälder"
10 May — 21 June, 2015
Kurt Mühlenhaupt Museum, Bergsdorf, Germany
Every year, on Mother's Day, the first major exhibition of the Kurt Mühlenhaupt Museum opens its doors. And once again, this year, Hannelore Mühlenhaupt has invited a special artist to showcase his work. This year, we can expect the renowned art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi with his own creations. On display are paintings, graphics, and sculptures in the 70-meter-long fieldstone barn in Bergsdorf. The opening will be accompanied by musical performances from the animals and Peter Subway in the beautiful ambiance of the Mühlenhaupt estate.
The Kurt Mühlenhaupt Museum was once a barn that belonged to the Lords of Liebenberg Castle. During GDR times, the agricultural production cooperative “Day of Liberation” operated here. Now a man is exhibiting here whose pictures fetched top dollar at Christie's or Lempertz. Until it became clear who had painted them.
The exhibition “Im Dunkel der Wälder" (English translation: "In the Dark of the Woods”) has three main focuses. One is “The Iron Maiden”, a group of sculptures for which Beltracchi had a story written, the “Fall of the Angel”, drawings of the apocalypse, studies that Beltracchi began in 2005 and then never used, as well as drawings by fellow prisoners from the prison.
Variations on Max Ernst
This can also be clearly seen in the exhibition in Bergsdorf: Beltracchi is strongest in the third focal point of the exhibition: where he plays with a master. Here there are variations on Max Ernst's forest pictures.
Does it bother him that his name isn't in the museum now? "Nonsense. The museums are just ghost trains. Normal people don't even go there. But here” – he points to the light stone walls – “here they stand in front of my pictures with a bratwurst in their hand. I think that’s good.” It also hung in Munich’s Haus der Kunst in 1978. Under his name. “But a life like that wouldn’t have been for me, it was too boring for me.” And anyway, a museum with the name Kurt Mühlenhaupt suits him. “He was also an anarchist painter.”
