A young boy looking towards the viewer. In front of him the sea, next to him on reddish shimmering rocks, gulls. It is about the artist Lothar Krone, born in Potsdam in 1952, drawn from a photograph as a child. The waves of the water reflect the light in different shades of blue. The boy, on the other hand, is a portrait, drawn in pencil on paper, woven into the acrylic background. A collage, but only at second glance. What he may have thought as a child can at best be guessed at from the title. “Lothar westward” is the name of the painting, created in 2020.
In the “Offener Kunstverein Potsdam eV”, or Okev for short, 29 works by the artist are currently being exhibited in three rooms on two floors. Hard to believe that all of them were created in pandemic times – between 2019 and 2022.
Different levels of history are interwoven. Axis leaps of time. “Irene Luise Dorothea Krone” shows a young woman in a red dress in front of the ruins of a corner house. His mother as a 17-year-old girl before World War II. Today the fish restaurant “Der Butt” is located there.
Behind: Two cars in trendy bright colors. “A Trabi and a West car,” knows Sabine Reatsch, who has known the artist since she was 15 through a joint drawing course when she was young. The head of the Okev for fine arts attests to Krone’s subtle sense of humour. “Almost everything he paints can be understood with a wink,” says Raetsch. Last but not least, Krone is also a master writer.
Painting pictures with words or telling stories through pictures – Lothar Krone obviously masters both. His works are characterized by a variety of techniques as well as a wealth of themes and colors. Again and again: Potsdam as the central theme. Sometimes the Glienicker Bridge as an outside view, sometimes a stairwell, sometimes an inside view. Krone’s works arouse curiosity about a sequel.
