In our family, an entire room in the basement of the apartment building in which we had lived since 1958 was dedicated to storing food. Here was the preserves in jars, plums, applesauce, pears and mirabelle plums. Flour, sugar and salt were stored here. Noodles, some canned meat, packet soups, Maggi bottles and whatever else was used in the daily household. Here was also the beer, I was allowed to bring it from the dark cellar to the apartment on the mezzanine floor at the risk of my life. There were also a few cases of white wine stored here, divided into Rhine and Moselle wines, some in green bottles, others in brown, of course obtained from the omnipresent sales department of the Pieroth company. But that is another story. 

It was the aftermath of the Second World War that materialized on this shelf. On the one hand, the increased prosperity since the end of the war found its expression in these orderly columns of goods, and at the same time, stockpiling also meant preparing for the next one, which every “realist” of the time expected in the not too distant future. But the disposable society, as it was soon to be called in socio-critical conversation, also broke through this meticulous plan of utilization, with more and more non-food items penetrating the cracks of this order. The economic boom meant that old things were exchanged for new ones, although they still fulfilled their function, simply because they were more beautiful, above all “more modern”. The economic boom meant that old things were exchanged for new ones, although they still fulfilled their function, simply because they were more beautiful, above all “more modern”. There were old lamps, old pots, indefinable current-driven machines and other stuff whose practical use was not apparent to me at the time.
Between all this stuff of a permanent intra-family household disintegration I discovered a dusty picture at some point. It showed a woman with a child in her arms. Out of an impulse that I did not quite understand, I took it with me, freed it from the dirt of careless storage and gave it a place on the wall in my room. Somehow it became mine and it has remained mine until today. It did not always hang on the wall, the career of the painting was also erratic for me. But it was never disposed of. My father told me on the occasion of a visit to the young family we were one day that he bought it in the thirties during his studies in Munich and that it decorated his little student dormitory there. It was in this picture that his ideal of women appeared to him. At first this remained a mystery to me. My father certainly had a sense of woman as a sensual being, as his cautious hints should sometimes tell me in secret. He noticed women who were sexy, women as they put the pin-ups of Playboy in a formulaic way. But in this picture of a “Madonna with child” he must have seen something like a metaphysical pin-up. At the moment it is hanging in our living room. I cleaned it and re-framed it and took a picture of the motif. When I started painting it my way, this picture was taken. I don’t know. I’m still undecided. Let others judge. You, for example…