People in Hamburg

The people of Hamburg were very friendly in our first visit to their city. Also they were clear heads and precise in their definitions as one expects them to be. One is not surprised of their behaviour as they are both, north Europeans (at the utmost northern point of Germany) and they are living in a port of trade and communication. I have always heard that in Hamburg people are in general more liberal, socially tolerant and used to internationality. They were indeed so!

The second early afternoon in Hamburg we visited the Hamburger Kunsthalle. There were permanent and temporary exhibitions to admire and the biggest running at the time is dedicated to German painters of the early 20th century, mostly expressionism and fauvism, all having as theme the sea.

Of course the pictures by Max Ernst came out of the masterly crowd for excellence in clarity and simplicity. Only second to him in my eyes were the works by Lyonel Feininger. He was experimenting with various light projections on the sceneries, giving various transparencies and intersections. I bought even a book about him in the shop of the house. In the book are further paintings, not included in the exhibition, with strangely formed bodies and cloths. For days I was totally obsessed with these paintings!

I bring you here some of them, copied from the book 'Der Fall Feininger' by Petra Werner in Koehler  Amelang publisher, Leipzig of which I am underlying the copyright.

At the same museum we enjoyed also a pop-art exhibition with moslty American artists and a cabinet of our British Hockney. There were very neat drawings and watercolours, he produced in the sixties out of his inspiration by some poems of K.Kavafi.