Michael Reichel (ari)
Uwe Ramlow, M. A. - Bauhaus Weiterbildungsakademie Weimar e. V.
"Worpswede, Worpswede. You are always on my mind." Paula Modersohn-Becker, Heinrich Vogeler and the artists' village of Worpswede.
In 1899, the first painters settled in a moorland village on the outskirts of Bremen that had been little known until then. In doing so, they joined the ranks of the open-air painters who had already written a new chapter in the history of European art with the Barbizon School. In the midst of a harsh rural landscape with its peat farmers, a refuge of art and free spirit was created. The Worpswede painters celebrated a sensational success with their pictures in 1895. This had consequences: Within a few years, the village established itself as one of the most famous artists' villages. The young Paula Modersohn-Becker stopped in Worpswede, left the genre of landscape painting here with her unconventional painting style and advanced to become an important, early pioneer of classical modernism. The young writer Rainer Maria Rilke also paid tribute to the Barkenhoff, which Heinrich Vogeler shaped into an "island of beauty". The group broke up after a few years and the First World War created caesurae. The once celebrated Art Nouveau artist Heinrich Vogeler turned into a social utopian and shaped the Barkenhoff into a commune of life reform. Visions, tensions, failures and new beginnings accompanied the history of the artists' community, whose ideals repeatedly rubbed up against reality. The lecture introduces the changeful art and contemporary history of the today internationally known place.
