Zum Glück gibt es in Murnau nicht nur viele Corona-Leugner, die sich im örtlichen Kino einen Verschwörungstheoretiker-Film zur Pandemie ansehen, wie eine große Münchner Zeitung unlängst enttarnte, sondern auch noch das Schlossmuseum. Das legt Ehre ein für die 12.000 Einwohner zählende Gemeinde im Blauen Land. Sandra Uhrig, die das Haus mit seinem Schwerpunkt auf der Malerei von Gabriele Münter leitet, hat allerdings aktuell mit einer Haushaltssperre zu kämpfen, Murnau muss sparen. Es ist aber auch keine Kleinigkeit, sich eine ganzjährige Öffnung zu leisten. Zuletzt kamen fünfzigtausend Besucher im Jahr.
Hinter den nun ausgestellten Grieshaber-Drucken ist Uhrig schon seit 2016 her, Corona hat auch ihr die Planungen über den Haufen geworfen. Mittlerweile ist eine kleine Grieshaber-Renaissance in Gang gekommen, zuletzt haben Ausstellungen in Wiesbaden und Künzelsau den Künstler gewürdigt. Das Schlossmuseum konzentriert sich mit dreißig Exponaten in zwei Räumen ganz auf die Holzschnitte, die der 1909 in Rot an der Rot geborene Helmut Andreas Paul Grieshaber zwischen 1950 und 1960 schuf.
Er überlebt den Krieg und die Gefangenschaft
Es sind die Jahre, in denen er an der privaten Bernsteinschule in Sulz am Neckar unterrichtet, 1953 Riccarda Gohr (Künstlername Ralf Gregor) heiratet, zwei Kinder mit ihr aufzieht. Das Jahr 1954 sieht die ersten großen Einzelausstellungen, 1955 wechselt Grieshaber als Nachfolger von Erich Heckel an die Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. 1960 geht er im Streit um eine Prüfungsordnung, die noch aus der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus stammt. Seine Schüler, deren bekanntester Horst Antes ist, rühmen Grieshabers pädagogisches Ethos – er zwingt niemandem etwas auf.
At the age of thirty, the unemployed Grieshaber traveled the world for two years, England, Greece, Egypt. The trained printer and typesetter kept himself afloat with odd jobs. In 1933 the Nazis called him back, and he was seen as a politically unreliable person. In Germany, in his hometown of Reutlingen, he was forbidden from any artistic activity and was repeatedly harassed. Grieshaber continued to work under the radar, printing very small editions. In 1939, for example, he printed the shepherd god Pan, a motif that he would return to again and again. He survived the war and imprisonment in Belgium, and moved to Reutlingen's local mountain, the Achalm.
Despite all the modesty of his life, Grieshaber never lets one thing go to waste – his political instinct, his spirit of contradiction. He is a pacifist, peace activist and conservationist. When the Korean War breaks out, the next day he puts up a poster in Reutlingen with the image of “Korean Mother”. It shows a reduced face with a black headscarf, eyes and mouth just lines, and below it a five-line text that begins with “Peace to all mothers!” Signed by the “Committee of Fighters for Peace, Reutlingen Local Committee”. It only had one member.
Think, write, cut
The 1950s were to be the decade in which Grieshaber brought woodcuts, which had only flourished sporadically since the Middle Ages, back to their prime. He worked in unprecedentedly large formats, created prints measuring one by two metres, and took the genre into a league of its own with his expressive application of colour, somewhere between panel painting and sculpture. There is a SWR video in the exhibition that shows Grieshaber at work in 1964, a berserker who attacked the wood with knives, circular saws, grinders, milling machines and soldering irons, who repeatedly sprayed the printing blocks with colour using highly energetic physical force. And who cited grief as the main motivation for his art.
But Grieshaber also gives space to Eros, and to creatures in general. He uses the motifs of the numerous animals that live on the Achalm, including a chow chow, a potbellied pig and a rhesus monkey. He repeatedly focuses on the changing seasons; his autumn pictures use moss green, fawn brown, light ochre, Russian green, terracotta and Indian yellow.
One of the most convincing works is the triptych “African Passion”, the side panels of which show dancing Africans and dancing Arabs and are wider than the narrow “Rocket Man” in the center, a technoid human machine that, as a symbolic figure, indicates that Africa will not escape the Cold War either. The prints are anchored in the color scheme of the time in which they were created, but have enough gestural potential to be discovered by later generations. Grieshaber's attitude fits well in our time. His poster against corona deniers would have been nice to see.
Printing is an adventure. HAP Grieshaber (1909–1981). Hand prints from the 1950s. Murnau Castle Museum, until November 10. No catalogue.
