Book, 2019

Arbeitsbesuch Marita Kühn-Leihbecher

The artist explains her work
Book opened
Woman inspecting the book
Book for presentation on glass vitrine

Exhibition opening on the occasion of the 75th birthday of the graphic artist Marita Kühn-Leihbecher on 15 March 2019 at 7 pm in the Museum Reichenfels-Hohenleuben.

An insider tip is the work of Gera-born graphic artist Marita Kühn-Leihbecher, who is being honoured with a special exhibition at the Museum Reichenfels-Hohenleuben on the occasion of her 75th birthday. At the same time, the illustrated book “Arbeitsbesuch: Marita Kühn-Leihbecher” (Working Visit: Marita Kühn-Leihbecher) will be published, including photographs by the Erfurt photographer Uwe Steinbrück, who documented the creation process of a Schöpfcollage in summer 2018.

Since 1990, Marita Kühn-Leihbecher, together with her husband, the sculptor Volkmar Kühn, has been running the “Ateliergalerie am Kloster Mildenfurth” in her house in the direct vicinity of the Mildenfurth monastery and castle complex. There, in quiet restraint, she practises the rarely used technique of graphic paper making. In her works — always created in exceptional quality — she varies light, line and surface in an exquisite way, whereby contours or relief-like paper landscapes are created depending on the thickness of the application of the paper pulp. This results in the most diverse structures, the possible location of which is almost unlimited, which she describes as follows: “By scooping the paper myself, I can determine the surface, its thickness, transparency, colour and sound.”

The result — which she calls Schöpfcollagen — changes in colour in almost innumerable nuances and its own canon of forms: either as a composition of constructivist, non-representational graphics or as the exhaustion of the graphics as an interwoven whole, as the embodiment of forms and colours like a magmatic flow. This is the creative grasping of the fleeting moment as a mosaic piece of the here and now in the current of time. Because: “For me, the paper I create is a means of transporting my thoughts and ideas, always with a touch of unpredictability. It is full of design possibilities, whereby consciously unmistakable uniqueness is created”. In doing so, Marita Kühn-Leihbecher often postponed and postponed her artistic work in favour of the voluntary work of the Working Group Art and Culture Monastery Mildenfurth, which she has chaired since 1992.

This overflowing dedication to the preservation and development of culture as the source and foundation of individual and social identity, in concrete terms in Mildenfurth, cannot be overestimated. The special exhibition is an attempt to thank her.

Press release Museum Reichenfels-Hohenleuben from 07.02.2019

Contact

Museum Reichenfels-Hohenleuben
Reichenfels 1a in 07958 Hohenleuben
Opening hours: Tue-Thu 10-16 o’clock, Sat, Sun and holidays 13-17 o’clock as well as by appointment under phone 036622 / 7102
www.museum-reichenfels.de