There was great interest from the press! Newspapers, radio and even television were there!

Contribution to buten un binnen in the broadcast from 25.03.

The paintings of the Bremen painter Fritz Geerken were almost destroyed by the flood. But chance brought the granddaughter and a gallery owner together.

https://www.butenunbinnen.de/videos/fritz-geerken-ausstellung-kuenstler-zufall-100.html

Article in the Wümme Zeitung / Weser Kurier:

Galerie Schluh shows works by Borgfeld artist Fritz Geerken

The Schluh Gallery is showing numerous works by the late Borgfeld artist Fritz Geerken until June. What the flood in Borgfeld has to do with the exhibition.

Etchings, watercolors and oil paintings - Markus Lippeck and Claudia Geerken show works by the Borgfeld artist and Worpswede painter Fritz Geerken.

Photo: Sabine von der Decken

To the article in the Weserkurier

Radio on NDR Culture:

"From the flood to the surface": Exhibition shows rescued pictures

To the NDR report

In Borgfeld on the Wümme, which was particularly badly hit by the floods, the estate of the painter Fritz Geerken was threatened with destruction. This alarmed a gallery owner from the artists' village of Worpswede. The result: an exhibition opening on March 17th.

by Jan-Bastian Buck

Gallery owner Markus Lippeck and Claudia Geerken - the artist's granddaughter - still have a lot planned. We are on the first floor of the Galerie Schluh in Worpswede . Around 70 works by the painter, who belongs to the second generation of artists from the further Worpswede area counts, hang on three floors. Lippeck and Geerken check whether the arrangement is correct and assign the correct titles. Sometimes the sorting is not so easy - Geerken left behind around 4,000 works.

Landscapes, water and light in northern Germany played an important role for Geerken. In addition to working with pastels, watercolours and oil paints, he mainly worked with etchings and experimented a lot. Geerken's granddaughter and the gallery owner know that this exhibition was anything but ordinary. The starting point was that gallery owner Lippeck himself was affected by the flooding: "We have a small underground lake here in Schluh, which was very tense due to the weather. Then I heard the weather report and knew that flooding was coming. Then I came across this NDR article and simply got in touch. And then I thought, this somehow fits." His gallery was empty at the time and that's how the contact came about.

Geerken Pictures in Worpswede: A project with a win-win effect

Claudia Geerken didn't need much convincing. The situation in her parents' house in Borgfeld, where the artist's estate was stored, was dramatic, she says: "You couldn't get to the house without a fishing suit or a boat. My parents didn't want to leave either. There were also pictures of my grandfather in the basement - not all of them, but a large part of them were stored down there. We managed to get almost all of them up, maybe a few, a few frames and so on. And then it got damp. And you have to do a bit of restoration, but we'll manage it. Then the nice Markus Lippeck said that we could store some at his place. And while we're at it, we can also have an exhibition."

For Lippeck it was clear that this was not only a project that was exciting, but also fit in very well with what he had planned for the Schluh Gallery: "We are now having a Fritz Gerken retrospective here with the Geerken family. It is a cross-section of this estate, which has not really been shown for almost 20 years. On the other hand, it is also for us, because last year we had a commercial gallery here, which is now being converted into an association. And that thrives on synergy and participation. We also want to concentrate on estates."

Danish coastal landscapes in the basement

Fritz Geerken's granddaughter is of course delighted that her grandfather is now able to attend an exhibition in Worpswede by such a coincidence: "The whole family is proud. Everyone is coming together on Sunday for a big family reunion and is all delighted that the pictures are hanging here." We have now arrived in the basement of the gallery. There are completely different Geerken pictures hanging here - Danish coastal landscapes instead of fine, detailed drawings in black and white. Finally, Claudia Geerken wants to get one more thing off her chest: "I would really like to thank the colleagues who made the contact. Otherwise none of this would have happened. Thank you very much."