Art fans can gain an insight into Wismut's extensive art collection at the historic cotton mill in Zwickau. The special exhibition "Sun Seekers! Art and Mining at Wismut" shows more than 200 works of art - from paintings and graphics to two monumental murals from former sites of the GDR mining company that have never been shown in public before.
Part of the Capital of Culture year
The show is the largest exhibition on the subject to date, announced the city of Zwickau. It can be seen from April 10 to August 10. The project is part of the Capital of Culture Chemnitz program. Zwickau is one of the partner municipalities.
In the GDR era, Wismut mined weapons-grade uranium in Thuringia and Saxony for the Soviet Union's nuclear program. The miners extracted around 231,000 tons of ore from the earth. Wismut also collected art. The collection comprises 4,241 works by 475 artists. According to the city of Zwickau, it is the most extensive and important art collection of a GDR company.
Heroes of mining and social criticism
The exhibition features works by renowned artists who worked in the GDR, such as Peter Kraft, Werner Petzold and Eva Schulze-Knabe. Many of the pictures are related to mining, industry or nuclear power - and often focus on working people. SDAG Wismut (Sowjetisch-Deutsche Aktiengesellschaft Wismut) awarded extensive commissions to painters and graphic artists.
According to curator Paul Kaiser, the exhibition reflects the transformation of art in East Germany. While mining life was heroically portrayed at the beginning, socially critical depictions also increased in the 1970s and 1980s.
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