The Beuel painter Helmut Degenhardt and the torches of the Vilich Adelheidis School children

at the Mayor Stroof House
Adelheidisstr. 3
53225 Bonn-Vilich

Vernissage: Friday, 11.11.2022 at 7.00 p.m.

Introductory lecture: Dr. Sylva Harst

open daily from 5pm - 7pm

Finissage: Sunday, 20.11.2022 at 17.00

Guided tours for school classes are available on request.
Contact: denkmalverein.bonn@t-online.de

The Beuel painter and graphic artist Helmut Degenhardt (1924 - 2002) was an exceptional artist. Severely handicapped from birth by spastic paralysis, he initially took painting and drawing lessons with Theodor Pape, a private lecturer in Bonn, and from 1943 to 1946 he studied glass painting, among other things, at the Cologne Art Academy. His breakthrough came in 1950, when the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Bonner Kunsterzieher" (Working Group of Art Teachers in Bonn) exhibited twelve of his watercolours showing children in a (Beuel) St. Martin's procession. Later, this cycle was published by the city of Bonn and used as a representative gift.

Although he also drew protraits and continued to paint watercolours, his artistic love was stained glass. In close collaboration with the Derix glass workshop, he creates stained glass windows for the parishes of St. Michael (Weststadt), St. Maria-Magdalena (Endenich), St. Maria-Königin (St. Augustin) and St. Benediktus (Düsseldorf-Heerdt) according to his strict specifications. He also designed the stained glass windows of the Anne Frank secondary school in Vilich.

Since he is not only dependent on the support and care of his parents as an artist, it is a bitter blow for him when his mother dies in 1970 and his father twelve years later. It meant the end of his artistic career. He died on 4 October 2002.

The exhibition presents his twelve-part Martin cycle in Vilich's Bürgermeister-Stroof-Haus and is accompanied by the torches of Vilich's Adelheidis School children, who are invited to collect them again in a small ceremony on 20 November.