When Andy Warhol brought Pop Art to Lübeck

It was a small sensation:40 years ago, none other than the US artist Andy Warhol opened an exhibition in Lübeck - and presented his latest work:the "Holstentor".

by Kathrin Otto

November 13, 1980 is a cloudy autumn day in the Hanseatic city. It's drizzling as Heiner Reese gets into his car to drive to Hamburg Airport. The trained carpenter and furniture store owner wants to pick up "distinguished visitors" there:Andy Warhol is coming all the way from New York to northern Germany to open an exhibition of his works in Lübeck that evening. The artist and pop art co-founder will be accompanied by Christopher Makos, a US photographer with whom he works closely. Many of the photographs that Warhol processes and alienates with his special screen printing technique come from Makos.

Andy Warhol - From advertising to art

Andy Warhol, born in Pittsburgh in 1928, decided to switch to the art scene in the early 1960s after a very successful career as a commercial artist and illustrator. He experimented with the screen printing process and acrylic paints, which had previously been considered rather inartistic, and produced the first - and today world-famous - series such as "Campbell's Soup Cans", the "Coca Cola Bottles" or the "Dollar Bills".

So Warhol brings everyday objects into art, but does not shy away from using press photos with scenes such as car accidents or plane crashes in his pictures. In the mid-1960s he produced numerous series of portraits of famous people such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Mao Tse Tung.

Marzipan and Lübecker Rotspon for the pop art artist

On this evening in November, Andy Warhol and Christopher Makos will first be received in Lübeck's town hall - where they will be greeted with marzipan and Lübecker Rotspon. Then Heiner Reese goes with the two of them to a meal at the Lübecker Schiffergesellschaft. He remembers this visit well a few years ago in an interview with the NDR - above all the dessert and Andy Warhol's great enthusiasm:"The reporter from the 'Lübecker Nachrichten' who was present had to leave earlier to write his article. And As soon as Christopher Makos and Andy Warhol noticed that the press was gone, they grabbed the dessert bowl from the table and emptied it," says Reese.

Warhol vernissage in the furniture store

After the meal, we go to the vernissage. However, this does not take place in a museum or a large gallery, but in Heiner Reese's furniture store. Andy Warhol enters the approximately 2,000 square meter salesroom, briefly examines his approximately 150 works on the walls and nods in agreement.

Then he does what he often did back then, when the hustle and bustle around him is too big for him:he puts on his headphones and simply lets the event unfold. In addition to well-known series such as "Flowers", "Marilyn Monroe" or "Joseph Beuys", his pictures also include four completely new works, the series "Holstentor". These four pictures were taken on the occasion of the exhibition based on photos by Christopher Makos.

German walls as pop art

For Heiner Reese, 1980 is not the first exhibition in his furniture store. In order to present the fine furniture there appropriately, he buys drawings and pictures by Salvador Dalí and other well-known artists. To keep new works hanging on the walls of his salesrooms, he begins exchanging pictures with gallery owners. In this way, in the mid-1970s, he also met the Bonn gallery owner Hermann Wunsch, who worked closely with Andy Warhol. Wunsche suggests a Warhol exhibition to the Lübeck art lover, but he has one condition. "A picture had to be bought back then," Reese later describes it. "So I said:Fine, no problem, I'll buy one."

The exhibition is planned jointly and the "Holstentor" is commissioned from the pop artist. Four different versions of it will be presented to the public for the first time on November 13th. They belong to the "Monumenta Germaniae" series, which Andy Warhol made of German buildings at the suggestion of Hermann Wunsch. It includes the Cologne Cathedral, the Berlin Reichstag, the Hamburg Michel and the outer bailey of the Drachenburg in the Siebengebirge. The four "Holstentore" are very different in color, one variant is pink, another has the color of brick. Heiner Reese has to decide which of the paintings he wants to buy and chooses the version in pink.

A piece of Warhol stays in Lübeck

Andy Warhol spends the night in the Hanseatic city and stays a few more days in northern Germany, including opening an exhibition in Hamburg. His "Holstentor" first became the property of Heiner Reese, who later withdrew from the art business and sold it. With the help of a foundation, the picture became the property of the museums for art and cultural history and subsequently adorned a wall in the St. Annen art gallery in Lübeck.

Even the Campbell's cans, which became famous - at least in this country - above all through Andy Warhol's pictures, have found their way to the Hanseatic city. The US company has had its German headquarters in Lübeck since 2002. This is one of the reasons why the famous Pop Art artist, who died unexpectedly in 1987 after an operation on the gallbladder, is still present in Lübeck to a certain extent.