Farbfieber
Fürstenwall 210
40215 Düsseldorf
Tel. / Fax: 0211 / 378198
E-Mail:
farbfieber@t-online.de
homepage
www.farbfieber.de
Farbfieber
Farbfieber is an non-profit-making association in public interest who wants to stimulate meetings and communication of people with artistic means in order to promote international understanding.
Farbfieber is the information and communication centre for all projects. We produce the journal in three languages and mail the latest news. All projects are placed in the internet, so that a network and communication between each other is possible. We advise groups, hold lectures, arrange partnerships, organize performances and conferences and make the project public. In addition a comprehensive documentation is being planned.
The project are only made possible through great voluntary engagement of many people; but this costs a lot of money. On this account sponsors are welcome. Financial aid of the project participants is also necessary.
Art is public
In 1978, a group of students of Düsseldorf Academy of Arts began to paint the facades of the buildings they lived in. The intention was being not only to save them from the wrecking ball, but also as a general departure from the traditional place of showing art. The goal became a form of “public" art, involving the incorporation and participation of people on the artistic and social creation of a particular environment. In this way, the murals are a reflection of the political and social movements of of the last 20 years in Germany.
Images which developed out of neighborhood-related themes in conjunction with tenants associations and residents, images which emerged from peace movements, foreign aliens groups, and citizens initiatives. Even in the villages near the nuclear missile storehouses, the muralists were active.
The group of muralists from Düsseldorf didn´t limit itself strictly to wall murals but also developed “living pictures" for a variety of street performances. In one example, for several years they formed the spearhead of the Carnival Parade along with a samba group, with their own float relating to a current political theme, often to the discomfort of the official Carnivalists, who were nevertheless unable to stop the group´s actions.
In 1987 the muralist group “Farbfieber" was born as a non-profit organization which strives to encourage through artistic means the meeting and communication between people and more specifically to promote the understanding among nations.
In the same year the first mural was created in direct cooperation with an artist from Nicaragua, who was especially invitedby the organization for that purpose. Since then, the organization has worked intensively with artists from Latin America. In the following 12years, through the initiative of the organization and of the artist Klaus Klinger, more than 70 murals have been created in Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, Italy and Germany. Public functions, festivals and street performances accompany the work.
In 1992 the Mural Project Latin America-Europe was organized, in which more than 70 artists from both continents participated and over 50 wall paintings were realized, in cities across Europe, urging viewers to reflect upon a common future. In particular, a longstanding partnership and intensive artistic exchange with Pinar del Rio (Cuba) has arisen out of the project.
One main area of work has always been the projects with children and teenagers, in which a particular place is designed within a creative atmosphere. Along with children, not only schoolyards and playgrounds have been given a new look, but also, in one important example,the wall of the city hall in Solingen, in remembrance of the 1993 arson attack on a Turkish apartment building. In Nicaragua, along with a group of children, all 18 outer walls of a town residents-center were painted.
1998 the organization began organizing Agenda 21, a worldwide mural project in which 100 artists from 20 countries participate and for which the organization has received the patronage of UNESCO.
Most of the projects are only made possible through great voluntary engagement of many people; the organization itself has minimal financial means at its disposal, and public grants can only cover a small part of the projectsë costs.
Klaus Klinger has taken over the artistic and organizational
administration of the projects, Paola Ramirez helps with the organization and Spanish language correspondence in addition to her work as a social education worker, and Ulrich Wiegner is responsible for the English language
correspondence and above all for the design and layout of the publications. Other members of the organization contribute by participating in the projects themselves or through donations.
Klaus Klinger
Since the end of 1997, the artist Klaus Klinger developed the concept for the world-wide mural project in connection with the Agenda 21.
Klaus Klinger studied at the "Kunstakademie Düsseldorf" and together with other artists, he initially started painting murals in public places from 1978 onwards. Through journeys in 1980/81 to the United Sates of America and Mexico he went deeper into his studies. Since 1987 he organised a number of intercultural mural projects together with artists from Latin-America and worked in Nicaragua, Chile, Brazil, Senegal, Namibia and especially in Cuba.
The bottomline of his extended understanding of art is to find new ways of a communicative dialogue to answer questions of our society. He does this together with artists from different cultural backgrounds and with local people, living in the surrounding areas of the mural projects. That is why the murals are common projects with many ideas incorporated.
Klaus Klinger implemented many projects together with children and youth-groups, painting their murals according to their own ideas. Other significant aspects of
Klaus Klinger's work are his sculptures, including masks, figures and huge objects, created during action workshops in public spaces.
