Draft:Solingen “Schwarzes Haus” (“Black House”)Artists' Colony

The Red House and the Black House – a centrepiece of the Solingen artists' colony

Sign at the Black House

The Solingen “Schwarzes Haus” (Black House) artists' colony refers to a group of painters that consisted of Erwin Bowien, Bettina Heinen-Ayech and Amud Uwe Millies and formed after the Second World War in Solingen.

The site

Egmond aan Zee, by Erwin Bowien (1937)

Summer storm in Algeria, by Bettina Heinen-Ayech (1974)

The initial base for the artists' colony was the literary and cultural salon of Erna Heinen-Steinhoff (1898–1969) and her husband, poet and journalist Hanns Heinen (1895–1961), in Solingen; here, for example, Nobel Prize winners Sigrid Undset and Rabindranath Tagore were in attendance. At the end of the 1920s, painter Erwin Bowien joined them. In 1932, the Heines acquired two half-timbered houses of historical significance in the Höhscheid district of Solingen. Over the next almost 90 years, the two buildings, known as the “Red House” and the “Black House”, developed into a meeting place for artists, writers and intellectuals, and served as studio houses.

The People

Bowien, Heinen-Ayech and Millies formed the “painter triumvirate” of Solingen. Contrary to the “zeitgeist”, which favoured abstraction, the three artists primarily painted portraits, landscapes, cityscapes and scenes from everyday life.

Erwin Bowien also shaped the artists' colony in terms of its outlook: he saw himself as European early on, sought dialogue with other cultures, spoke several languages and actively promoted friendship between nations. In contrast, Bettina Heinen-Ayech was married to an Algerian, spent many years of her life in her husband's home country and painted pictures of the local landscape. Uwe Millies travelled to Eastern Europe, the Far East and America from the mid-1960s onwards. He brought the surname Amud (Stock) with him from a trip to Egypt. The three members of the group travelled to Europe: “The trio travelled together on many trips. Although they represented different generations, they were very close personally.” The two houses in Solingen and the Bergisches Land were the centre of their activities.

The legacy

In 2022, Bettina Heinen-Ayech's son, Munich doctor Haroun Ayech, founded the “Bettina Heinen-Ayech Foundation - Foundation for Art, Culture and International Dialogue” to maintain the legacy of the artists' colony. In February 2023, the ‘Black House’ was accepted into the “European Federation of Artists’ Colonies” and a little later into the Council of Europe's cultural route “Impressionisms Routes”.

From October 2024 to April 2025, works from the Solingen artists' colony will be shown in the Dachau Art Gallery for the first time in a joint exhibition. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, visitors to exhibitions there can usually expect “gold-framed forest solitude in oils, meadows and cloud mountains, munching cows. And now: Wuppertal. A steel bridge spanning a river delta of asphalt, street lanterns and multi-storey residential buildings line the streets; one can see a few cars and isolated passers-by, an urban panorama, dated 1961. The audience is amazed.” But you can also find motifs in the Swiss Oberland, Augsburg and Venice, Norway and Nepal and other countries.

Exhibitions

• 2024 Dachau Art Gallery: „In der Welt unterwegs – Die Künstlerkolonie Solingen“ [“Travelling the world – the Solingen artists' colony”]

Literature

• Dachau Galleries and Museums Association (eds.): In der Welt unterwegs. Die Künstlerkolonie Solingen. Catalogue of the exhibition „In der Welt unterwegs – Die Künstlerkolonie Solingen“ [“Travelling the world – the Solingen artists' colony”] in der Gemäldegalerie Dachau (31 October 2024–27 April 2025). 2024, ISBN 978-3-949683-07-7

Web links

• Artists‘ colony “Schwarzes Haus”, Solingen
• Art Gallery  Current exhibition – Dachau galleries and museums. In: dachauer-galerien-museen.de. Accessed on 9 November 2024.