Among heaps of artists’ materials

The Mannheim artists’ estates have already saved a good many artworks from the landfill. And they have been protecting the cultural and historical heritage of Mannheim with tremendous commitment since 2005.

Paper—stacked, creased, folded and crumpled. Whether drawings, sketches, collages or photographs. Paper is everywhere. In Norbert Nüssle’s studio in Mannheim’s city centre, there were endless amounts of it—and somehow wherever he went, too. At the market, on Alter Messplatz and Paradeplatz, he collected advertisements, newspapers and magazines, Polaroids, cigarette packets, napkins and wallpaper remnants and made collages from them, mixing them with stones, rubble and sand—essentially whatever he found lying around on the ground. At the same time, his hometown was changing so rapidly that Norbert Nüssle almost couldn’t keep pace. Almost instantly when the next vacant space was filled with buildings, he started to draw, to glue and to document the things going on around him.

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Even today, you can still see in his impressive collages where exactly Norbert Nüssle (1932–2012) stood. What he saw, what he was concerned with, and yes, maybe even what he felt. “Petites choses”, or little things, he wrote in French on one of his boxes with materials. And exactly these little things amongst his huge pool of finds are what constituted his body of work. In a sense, it is Mannheim’s post-war building and city history that is stored in the collection of artists’ estates housed in a former power station in the Rheinau area—together with his work. Neatly packed, stowed away in boxes, hanging shelves, graphics cabinets and cartons, that is. But as soon as you open one of them, you realise—this art still is wonderfully chaotic and incredibly carnal.

Would something like this really be gone someday? “Yes and no,” Silvia Köhler says, chairperson of the Mannheim artists’ estates—since Norbert Nüssle’s family was quite aware of the value of his works. But where to store this abundance of “little things” and in some cases room-height collages? Already in his lifetime, Norbert Nüssle established that the artists’ estates should take his works—thus a catalogue of works was set up. But it isn’t always like that. At the end of an artist’s life, there is often a large, yet sometimes multitudinous work. And with it, the questions arise whether something actually is art or if it can be disposed of—and what by all means has to be preserved. This is exactly the point where the estates’ foundation comes in. “Most museums procure only the most important works of an oeuvre and reject the rest,” Sophia Denk says—who, as art director, together with Silvia Köhler and numerous volunteers, not only manages the estates, but also records, documents, processes, classifies, publishes and exhibits them. “To us it is vital that there is always a link to Mannheim,” Köhler says.

Would something like this really be gone someday? “Yes and no,” Silvia Köhler says, chairperson of the Mannheim artists’ estates—since Norbert Nüssle’s family was quite aware of the value of his works. But where to store this abundance of “little things” and in some cases room-height collages? Already in his lifetime, Norbert Nüssle established that the artists’ estates should take his works—thus a catalogue of works was set up. But it isn’t always like that. At the end of an artist’s life, there is often a large, yet sometimes multitudinous work. And with it, the questions arise whether something actually is art or if it can be disposed of—and what by all means has to be preserved. This is exactly the point where the estates’ foundation comes in. “Most museums procure only the most important works of an oeuvre and reject the rest,” Sophia Denk says—who, as art director, together with Silvia Köhler and numerous volunteers, not only manages the estates, but also records, documents, processes, classifies, publishes and exhibits them. “To us it is vital that there is always a link to Mannheim,” Köhler says.

To us it is vital that there is always a link to Mannheim

Silvia Köhler

With the help of Jochen Kronjäger, then vice-director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, they could be rescued, however. Today they constitute the basis of the foundation’s collection, which by now comprises of 6,000 pieces of art by 17 artists—with around 1,000 by Nüssle alone. Most of them are graphic works and paintings and all of them are telling their very unique life stories. For instance, that of Ilana Shenhav (1937–1986) who learned to paint in Theresienstadt. Or that of the experimental artist Franz Schömbs (1909–1976) whose films are housed in the archives of the Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, while his paper works and oil paintings belong to the Mannheim-based foundation. And one thing is true for Schömbs as well as for so many artists: his strong connection to a very special place in Mannheim—the observatory.

The building from the era of the prince-elector had served as a studio building for decades, but today it is taken care of by an action group to which the artists’ estates belong. One of the responsibilities of the foundation is the maintenance of the studio of Walter Stallwitz who painted the portrait of politicians, such as Willy Brandt, but also of other well-known persons from Mannheim, and who after the experiences of world war II dedicated himself to foster social cohesion and fight against social injustice. High above the roofs of the town, an unparalleled time capsule has been preserved, which was made accessible by the foundation. It seems almost as if the painter, who died in 2022, had left the room just for a minute. “For us, this is about making the time of a particular artist comprehensible and to show what mattered to him or her,” Sophia Denk says, who wrote her master’s thesis on Ute Petry (1927–2009), one of the foundation’s artists. “Regional art history hardly played a role in my studies. Yet, for me it’s exactly this groundwork, doing my research with the originals that appeals to me,” the young art historian, who was born in 1997, explains. In many conversations with friends and family members, she traced the painter’s life and medical history, but also her courage to see art as a profession and vocation. Standing between hanging racks and boxes in Mannheim’s Rheinau area, Ute Petry glances confidently into the camera in a photo from the 1950s. In between, shells and toy tanks peer out from the shelves. Some discoveries can also be made here: “We were most of all familiar with Will Sohl’s idyllic watercolours of Sylt and the Mediterranean,” Silvia Köhler recounts. “It was much later that we discovered how intensively he also worked together with the architect Otto Bartning on art-in-architecture projects.”

Only a few steps away from the rather functional depot rooms of the foundation, behind a plain iron door, there are two exhibition areas with large workshop windows. Events and exhibitions of the artists’ estates take place here—even if they actually go on tour quite often. “We deliberately go to different places, because this allows us to constantly reach different people,” Silvia Köhler explains, who for many years has been the head (and heart) of the foundation. After training as a bookseller, she studied German, history and sociology in Mannheim, worked as a technical editor in Darmstadt and then as a consultant and project manager at SAP. In 2008, the foundation of the estates became something like an affair of her heart, so that she has untiringly been working on promoting it ever since—on a voluntary basis. Today, she is working on the project together with Sophia Denk, Susanne Kaeppele and Christine Schumann, along with many other volunteers.

Why does she do that? “I am fascinated by how much the artists as seismographs of their time reacted and to what,” Silvia Köhler states. After the war and the holocaust were over, many of these artists committed themselves to enhancing international understanding, peace, social cohesion and equality, but also critically accompanied urban development, as she explains. Peter Schnatz chose skin as the theme of his life—that of people and that of the Earth. In one movie, he boldly cuts into the screen, just to sew it back together again in the next scene. In his portraits, Edgar Schmandt took a deep look into the politics and the psyche of his time. And Norbert Nüssle? It would be interesting to see at what places we could find him in Mannheim’s city centre today. With scissors, paper and a tube of glue in hand, that is for sure.

https://www.kuenstlernachlaesse-mannheim.de