Travelling the world—The Solingen Artists’ Colony

By boat, train and car to Venice, Trondheim and Luxor: The three main artists of the Solingen Artists’ Colony, Erwin Bowien (1899–1972), Bettina Heinen-Ayech (1937–2020) and Amud Uwe Millies (1932–2008), travelled the world painting landscapes, cities, people and street scenes, some of which are no longer to be found. But they always returned to Solingen to live and work. They saw themselves in the tradition of the ‘landscape painters’, the artists who, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, went out of the cities into the countryside to paint the landscape ‘plein air’.

When people talk about Artists’ Colonies, it is motifs such as the forests of Fontainebleau, the Baltic Sea near Worpswede or the Dachauer Moos that arise in the mind’s eye: A particular place became the starting point for a whole series of works that were influenced and motivated by the charm of the surrounding landscape in its various manifestations. However, the pictures of the Solingen Artists’ Colony, one or two generations younger than the great role models, are characterised, in addition to their fixed point of Solingen and the Bergisches Land, by the numerous trips that the three main artists undertook in the course of their lives. They travelled a lot together and painted what they saw, places, landscapes and people from different countries and cultures. Yet their artistic style is highly individual and concise, ranging from impasto oil painting and expressive watercolours with intense colours to translucent oil painting, delicate pastels and quick drawings.

The exhibition Travelling the World—The Solingen Artists’ Colony presents works by the three protagonists and their view of the world. As chroniclers of their time, they captured views that may no longer exist today—such as an almost car-free street at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Visit the special exhibition from 31 October 2024 to 27 April 2025 at the Gemäldegalerie Dachau, Konrad-Adenauer-Straße 3, 85221 Dachau, Germany, www.dachauer-galerien-museen.de, Opening hours: Tuesday – Friday 11 am – 5 pm, Saturday, Sunday, holidays 1 – 5 pm.