Ok: yesterday I learned through Ostblog that Harald Metzkes is celebrating his 75th birthday. Metzkes is one of my favorite artists, not just because he and Elrid Metzkes were incredibly kind to me during a visit and interview.
Harald Metzkes' work from the '50s and early '60s is powerful and beautiful and the "Berliner Schule" group as a whole is extremely intriguing, despite the fact that they are being somewhat romanticized now, post-Wende (see Kunst in der DDR). I know I should expand this to discuss some of Metzkes', Schroeder's, or Böttcher's work but instead I want to continue with today's thought:
Along with the news of Metzkes' birthday Web.de posted this interesting image:
How, after all my digging around in Berlin and my dwelling on the GDR in the Fifties, did I miss this? It's the cellar of the old Akademie der Künste building on Pariser Platz which Metzkes and a number of other later-to-be famous GDR artists covered with murals. I'm thrilled to hear about it, it's basically a discovery to me. Apparently everyone else already knew about it.
Freitag reports that Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper, an independent conservator, intervened when the Hotel Adlon planned to destroy the paintings in the process of expanding its underground levels. It seems the Fundus hotel group has put up the money to save the murals, which in itself is a good thing.
The slightly icky thing is what it intends to do with them. Any guesses? That's right, incorporate them into the hoity-toity hotel's restaurants. Not the formal dining area, though; Harald Metzkes' Die Tafelrunde beim Wilderer will be reinstalled in a brand new, casual space in which one can get "Take-Away-Coffees, Sandwiches und leichten Gerichten in vielen Variationen..." I guess that increases my chances of getting in to see it.
But what will be the name of this new cafe?
I am not kidding.
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