Death is in the gondola, around him the old, magnificent Venice. Like a demon, he wears iridescent black wings and a red bishop’s miter. An oppressive combination, and also socially critical. Werner Tübke painted it in 1973 as “Death in Venice”. Now the picture from Weimar can be seen again in the Leipzig Picture Museum – together with the painter’s best and most famous pictures of Italy such as the “Sicilian Landowner”.
The occasion is the new Tübke show, which Frank Zöllner curated. In Leipzig, Zöllner is an expert on Renaissance artists such as da Vinci and Michelangelo – and also on the old master, socialist realist Tübke. This is ultimately a continuation of his research into Italy, Zöllner told MDR KULTUR. “If you live and work in Leipzig, this is a good idea. In addition, the painter has a technical level that is rarely found in the 20th century.”
Italy’s influence on Tübke’s work
In order to understand Werner Tübke’s work, you have to know about his enthusiasm for the artistic movements of the Renaissance and Mannerism. Of his around 400 paintings, 15 percent are certainly influenced by Italy, says Zöllner – indirectly there are probably far more. The mannerist style of painting with its exotic color contrasts, exalted poses and over-defined muscular rhetoric captivated Tübke early on, so that he could be described as a mannerist even before his first trip to Italy in 1971. He had studied a lot of things in magazines or on the FFK beach, emphasizes Frank Zöllner: “They are mostly beach pictures in which he paints and draws like an Italian mannerist before he goes to Italy. And some of these pictures are also exhibited in Italy So he brought the mannerism he developed at Zingst to Italy and sold some of it there.”
Florentine mannerists preferred
Tübke’s penchant for mannerism went so far that he explicitly identified only with the Florentine Mannerists. On his trip to Italy in 1979, while visiting the Uffizi Gallery, he is said to have briefly thought, when he saw paintings by the mannerist Pontormo, that they were his. The exhibition shows one such picture from the Uffizi, the “Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand” by Pontormo. “Tübke was completely surprised that there was a plaque in the Uffizi that said that the painting was not by him, but by a Florentine Mannerist of the 16th century. The story has been passed down several times,” says Frank Zöllner.
Best and most famous Italy pictures of the painter
In order to locate Werner Tübke in post-war modernity, the exhibition also shows classic views of Italy as well as an Italian propaganda image with people and a red flag by the Italian Renato Guttuso. Tübke also had to fulfill his political mission in the GDR. Because he didn’t want to make propaganda art, he based himself on the old models and still created – for example in the middle of knight’s armor on puppet strings – socially critical statements that were not always entirely in line.
“Perhaps because the ‘Sicilian landowner’ in particular has the beautiful quality of confirming our prejudices,” says expert Frank Zöllner. “A young man with a decadent-looking dog: a typical representative of a parasitic class. And the other thing is a landscape view of a southern landscape that you couldn’t see in the GDR.”
International breakthrough thanks to Emilio Bertonati
In this show, which is worth seeing, you will always think about how Tübke’s mannerist style of painting was ultimately compatible with socialist state power. In any case, people in Italy in the 1970s were enthusiastic. And so the exhibition also shows – in a freshly restored setting – the portrait of Emilio Bertonati: a man with a piercing gaze, Tübke’s gallery owner in Milan, who ensured his international breakthrough with an exhibition there in 1971.
Information about the exhibition “Tübke and Italy”
March 7th to June 16th, 2024
Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts
Katharinenstr. 10, 04109 Leipzig
Opening hours:
Tue, Thu to Sun from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m
Wed from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m
Holidays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m
closed on Monday
Events (selection):
March 6th, 8 p.m.: Opening of the exhibition
March 17th, 11 a.m.: Work discussion in the exhibition for non-sighted and sighted people
Editorial processing: tmk