Right now, working out of his Speckstraße studio in Hann. Münden, artist Uwe Henze is trying to bridge a four-century gap between past and present. He’s elbow-deep in Weg des Friedens (Path of Peace), an oil painting commissioned to commemorate the 1626 “Blood Pentecost” massacre that left over 2,000 dead. It’s a heavy, visceral piece. If you pop into the studio today or tomorrow between noon and 3 PM, you’ll see him working air-drying clay directly into the canvas, molding physical bodies into a depiction of the Werra River painted in a stark, violent blood-red. Those clay forms represent the victims dumped into the water under the brutal command of Johann T’Serclaes von Tilly.
The Fallout of War on a Canvas
The composition of Henze’s work pulls the viewer in competing directions. Front and center, two hands reach out to clasp one another—an unambiguous nod to reconciliation and peace. But the backdrop is steeped in localized devastation. Henze is still mapping out the historical Münden skyline: the Blasius Church, bits of the old city wall embedded with actual clay cannonballs, and the infamous Powder Tower. “I might still add some flames or cannons in there,” Henze notes. Historically, the explosion of that powder tower took down the Aegidienkirche with it, though whether Tilly’s forces or the locals lit the fuse remains a historical blind spot.
Rather than getting bogged down in a forensic reconstruction of a battle scene, Henze leans heavily into artistic license. The slightly surreal execution is deliberate. Past and present bleed together on the canvas because he’s far less interested in painting a textbook history lesson than he is in exploring the emotional fallout of war on a community. After hashing things out with Pastor Andreas Risse, Henze envisioned the piece as a visual anchor for the local churches’ Week of Peace, where people of different denominations are currently gathering at historical sites to reflect. By the time the piece is officially handed over during the ecumenical Whit Monday service at Doktorwerder, Henze will have easily clocked over 100 hours on it.
A Wider Lens on Human Expression
Henze’s drive to process trauma and memory through art doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it taps into a deeply entrenched, centuries-old tradition of using the canvas and the printing press to confront human agony. You can see that exact same impulse heavily curated over at the Karlsruhe Art Museum right now. Slated to open over the Pentecost weekend, their new exhibition Expressiv! Grafik von Dürer bis Schlichter takes a deep dive into the raw mechanics of the human condition: terror, pathos, passion, and belonging.
Museum Director Stefanie Patruno describes the show as a deep reach into the institution’s own vaults, pulling out around 250 works on paper that span from the Renaissance straight through to contemporary pieces. The crown jewels of the exhibition are three small etchings by the Dutch Baroque master Rembrandt, depicting his mother at various stages of her life. Displayed together for the first time, these prints are a masterclass in how early on Rembrandt nailed the interplay of light, shadow, and the heavy, physical toll of aging.
From European Masters to Japanese Folklore
Curator Lil Helle Thomas has arranged the exhibit—which features everything from massive, wall-spanning pieces to tiny, intricate prints—into a dynamic, continuous frieze. It’s an eclectic mix that makes you do a double-take. You have the heavy hitters of European art like Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Martin Schongauer, and Lucas van Leyden sharing space with the likes of Anthonis van Dyck, Guido Reni, Tiepolo, and Claude Lorrain. Then, the exhibit shifts gears, bumping up against 19th-century Japanese color woodblocks. One standout is a visual narrative of Ishikawa Goemon, Japan’s answer to Robin Hood, whose legendary exploits famously landed him in a boiling oil bath rather than a hero’s welcome.
A massive chunk of what makes this Karlsruhe show possible traces back to Ferdinand Siegel. In 1896, the Mannheim-based lawyer gifted the city over 1,800 paper works, heavily stacked with 15th- to 19th-century Dutch and German masters. That donation alone brought in those Rembrandt etchings, alongside four of his self-portraits. The museum is currently systematically researching this foundational collection, with plans to have it fully digitized by the summer.
But the exhibition doesn’t stall out in antiquity. It pushes right into classical modernism with sharp, socially critical works from artists like Käthe Kollwitz, HAP Grieshaber, and Karl Hubbuch. Hubbuch’s stark depictions of society itself acting as the perpetrator bring the thematic loop right back around—mirroring the exact kind of systemic, historical violence Uwe Henze is actively working through with clay and oil in his studio today.