Wir überwinden Grenzen

14 plates, 1956

by HAP Grieshaber

Collages under formica and color woodcuts;
63 x 81 cm ("Sea Gods")
62.5 x 81 cm ("Am Materpfahl")
64 x 81 cm ("Pilzhexe")
39 x 62.5 cm ("Polyphemus")
62 x 41.5 cm ("Hexenfart")
81 x 113 cm ("Jahrmarkt")
81 x 112 cm ("Lantern Festival")
62 x 41.5 cm ("Black King", s.u.)
81.5 x 112 cm ("Zoological Garden")
81 x 112 cm ("Winter Painting")
81.5 x 112 cm ("Annunciation to the Shepherds")
81 x 176 cm ("The Prince's Railway")
81 x 112 cm ("The Wolf Comes")
62 x 40 cm ("Archangel")

University Medical Center Freiburg
Center for Child and Adolescent Medicine
Haus Sonne in the stairwell at the east entrance
Matthildenstraße 1

Collages under Resopal by HAP Grieshaber

Helmut Andreas Paul Grieshaber, born on 15.2.1909 in Rot/Oberschwaben, died on 12.5.1981 in Reutlingen, was one of the most important and original German artists of the woodblock print in the 20th century. The series of pictures on display here was commissioned in 1956 for the Schauinsland House of the Freiburg University Children's Hospital, which was newly built at the time. The technique used by the artist for this work is unique: Grieshaber used Resopal in order to comply with hospital hygiene standards and to avoid having to prohibit children from touching the work. The figures were cut from pre-resinated, colored cellulose foils and arranged in two layers; parts of other colors were inserted in the manner of inlays. When the cut color foils were pressed together, the cellulose dissolved under the synthetic resin and left behind only the trace of the artist's work, not the material; in some places, the color bled out at the edges. The graphite and the gold leaf overlays, on the other hand, remained in the resin like a fly in amber. Overall, the term "collages under Resopal" best describes the technique used by Grieshaber here.

The pictures were restored in 1989 in Freiburg's Augustiner Museum and now find a setting in the renovated "Haus Sonne" of the Freiburg Children's Hospital, which seems more appropriate to us than today's Haus Schauinsland.

The theme of the artist's series is figures and creatures from the world of the child as well as the world of fairy tales, which appeals to children and adults alike: Grieshaber depicts the realistic and the unreal, the graceful and the hideous. With his paintings, the artist attempts to open up a world that is appropriate to the children in his care.

_Source:
hap_{grieshaber, "Seestern und Tomahawk", fourteen collages under Resopal and two color woodcuts.}
^{Afterword by W. Boeck.Insel-Verlag, 1965}

Collages and color woodcuts, Schwarzer König, ZKJ