by Hubert Spierling (1925-2018)
Art Brut in the Lower Church
Photo: Adam Weiber
The large concrete-glass window in the lower church truly comes alive in the evening sun. It spans the full width of the low room’s end wall, serves as the only direct light source, and sets off the altar ensemble. The elements made of thick colored glass of various sizes, shapes, and colors are set in metal frames and grouted with blackened cast concrete. The frames are located behind 22 black pillars. The mesh-like wide and narrow concrete joints visually overlap the vertical piers, seemingly growing through them. The overall composition is thus made up of colored glass as well as black joints and piers, both of which are equally effective in visual terms.
Can a figurative motif be discerned in the window, or is it a free composition? With the bright red pattern against a white background in the middle, one might be reminded of a chalice, a temple menorah, or even a Y-shaped cross (forked cross).
„I create symbolic windows, but I do not paint symbols,“ said Hubert Spierling himself in an interview (2009). Spierling is regarded as one of the preeminent representatives of stained glass in post-World War II Germany. The glass wall elements were manufactured in 1959 at the Wilhelm Derix workshops for stained glass and mosaics in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth. Spierling worked with cast glass, rather than the later standard practice of using pre-supplied sheets that required cutting or hammering. Each piece of glass is a handcrafted, unique cast which, according to Spierling, was cast specifically in a Belgian glassworks based on a 1:1 cardboard template.
Spierling adapted the glass wall of the lower church—which he himself referred to as a crypt—yet it also fits the overall architecture of Liebfrauen. Dalle de verre in concrete as art brut: concrete-stained glass as brutalism in stained glass painting (Holger Brülls).
Photomontage: Dr. Philipp Reichling OPraem
References:
Brülls, Holger u.a. (Hrsg.): Hubert Spierling: Malerei und Glasmalerei, Paderborn 2010.
https://www.glasmalerei-museum.de/content/2-ausstellungen/1-sonderausstellungen/30-hubert-spierling-malerei-und-glasmalerei/spierling-faltblatt-2010_klein.pdf (retrieved February 19th, 2019).
