Tübke Monumental

A Gigapixel Experience

As initiator and organiser, KUNSTKRAFTWERK presents the TÜBKE MONUMENTAL project, a completely new approach to one of the most important works of figurative painting of the 20th century, the panoramic painting ‘Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany’ by Werner Tübke (1929-2004). For eleven years, between 1976 and 1987, the artist worked on the 14m x 123m work, the largest painting in Central Europe, from conception to completion. Far away from the art metropolises, it is housed in the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen.

THE EXHIBITION

THE GREAT CIRCLE

THE GREAT CIRCLE is based on twelve individual scenes from the Tübke panorama and tells the story of the cycle of utopias that fail again and again. The messages of these excerpts touch on an emotional level, thematising life and death, hope and downfall, rebellion and subjugation, thus allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the eternal themes of human history.

The immersive multimedia installation THE GREAT CIRCLE is a digital composition by media artist Franz Fischnaller and a homage to Werner Tübke. Selected scenes from Tübke’s Peasants’ War panorama glide across the walls of the KUNSTKRAFTWERK machine hall in Leipzig. Accompanied by musical compositions by Steve Bryson, the figures come to life and the visitors themselves become part of the 360° staging.

TÜBKE TOUCH

TÜBKE TOUCH is a cloud application designed by ArtCentrica for digital education. Tübke’s panoramic paintings can be viewed in their entirety on a touchscreen and you can zoom into the work in detail.
Various motifs are also accompanied by explanations. TÜBKE TOUCH enables direct and intensive engagement with a work of art that is almost impossible to grasp in the original due to its enormous size and wealth of figures.

WITNESSES

In addition to TÜBKE TOUCH, contemporary witnesses have their say in video interviews, talk about their personal experiences with the artist and provide insights into the creation of the gigantic work of art. People from Werner Tübke’s personal and artistic environment and with a connection to the creation of the panorama painting have their say.

Five short films with Brigitta Böttcher (painter, student of Tübke), Wolfgang Böttcher (painter, assistant to Tübke), Dietrich Wenzel (painter, assistant to Tübke), Peter Krötenheerdt (cultural functionary) and Christine Rink (former director of the Gallery of the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, wife of the painter Arno Rink) are available.

INSIGHTS

HOW THE PROJECT WAS CREATED

The idea for TÜBKE MONUMENTAL was born on the occasion of the painter’s 90th birthday. Using the latest digitalisation technologies, the imposing key work of German art history, which is hard to beat in terms of its richness of content and yet little known, is to be anchored in the public eye once again.

TÜBKE MONUMENTAL in numbers

Creative minds from four countries-Germany, France, Italy and the United States of America-are involved in the project.

> TÜBKE TOUCH—3,000 high-resolution images of the monumental painting were merged by Centrica into a single, almost 300GB image file with a massive resolution of 10 gigapixels (295,000×33,000 pixels).
Thanks to a collaboration with Centrica from Florence, the leading international specialist in the painting digitalisation sector, it was possible to capture the 1,700 square metre panoramic image in high resolution.
The giga-pixel images of the historical work form the basis for a new dimension of viewing and researching the painting down to the smallest detail.

> THE GREAT CIRCLE— 12 key scenes from the Tübke panorama are each transmitted by 25 projectors in a brilliant resolution of 21,840×2,000 pixels onto the 1,200 square metre surface of the KUNSTKRAFTWERK machine hall.
Centrica’s high-resolution digital images were used to develop a multimedia and immersive light and sound installation in the form of a 27-minute presentation for the rooms of KUNSTKRAFTWERK. Under the direction of new media artist Franz Fischnaller and with the collaboration of a team from CINECA, Italy’s leading high-performance computing centre, and American composer Steve Bryson, an overwhelming image and sound composition has been created based on the Peasants’ War epic by Werner Tübke. Fischnaller presents his own artistic interpretation of the masterpiece.

DAS ORIGINALWERK

The PANORAMA MUSEUM was built especially for Werner Tübke’s (1929-2004) monumental panorama painting “Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany” (1983/87). The work of art, which covers more than 1,700 square meters and is one of the largest paintings in the world, can still be admired there today.

This colossal project was commissioned by the GDR government, which decided in the early 1970s to build a memorial to the German Peasants’ War on the Schlachtberg near Bad Frankenhausen. The museum was opened in September 1989, shortly before the peaceful revolution.

THE TÜBKE STORY

Together with Bernhard Heisig and Wolfgang Mattheuer, Werner Tübke was one of the founders of the Leipzig School. He was rector of the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig until 1976. His depictions of social conflicts in the painterly tradition of the Renaissance were heavily criticised by the GDR leadership. Nevertheless, he achieved international recognition, particularly in Italy, to which he felt a special artistic affinity.