"Animalistic", Klinikum Fürth, Fürth, Bavaria, 15.04. – 15.07.2005

[Meinhard Elss (1949 – 2014)]    [Hartmut Kuhnke]

Fürther Nachrichten, 18.05.2005, CLAUDIA SCHULLER



The muscle-cat likes to show its biceps

Photographs, cartoons, and student art works to an animal theme in the main building of the hospital

The favorite pet of the Germans isn’t the dog or cat. It is the fish. About 30 million ornamental fish are swimming in aquariums of the country. Perhaps they are so popular because they neither bark when the phone rings nor disturb in bed at night. The pupils from Fürth, whose art works are exhibited on the first floor of the hospital rather prefer to picture cuddly pets or African wildlife. They where first, when John Hammond’s Art Agency conceptualised their current exhibition called „Tierisch“ ("Animalistic").

Bank robber

Meinhard Elss approaches in his cat cartoons the subject from the funny side. The animals represent each a term, like in guessing games. There is the "muscle cat", showing its well-rounded biceps, but also the "robbery cat" raiding a bank, the "cata-pult", with which a pussy cat is shooting another into the sky, the wacky "Kami-cat" and the charming "Elia Katzan".

With the velvet paws also Hartmut Kuhnke is dealing, but in the woodcut version, which once Dürer and Cranach brought to completion. Using the technique to cut a drawing in a wooden plate, thereby producing a printing form and then deducting prints, the artist from Windsbach also has made elephants, dogs, polar bears and crows. Kuhnke uses the colour scheme economically and through this he is consciously setting accents and underscores his mastery of one of the oldest methods of humanity, to capture picture ideas.