Rudi Hurzlmeier in the Buchheim Museum Bernried: Our hilarious excursion tip!

Created: 06/24/2022, 11:08 am

By: Katja Kraft

Rudi Hurzlmeier would like to “give the pigs a better image”.

He himself grew up in a village in Lower Bavaria and thinks it's a shame how animals are treated.

© Buchheim Museum Bernried

When a visit to a museum is fun for the whole family, the artist Rudi Hurzlmeier is behind it.

The Buchheim Museum Bernried is showing his hilarious works until September 25, 2022. Our studio visit to the fantastic artist.

The first question goes to Rudi Hurzlmeier's wife.

Is she sometimes afraid of her husband?

Gabriella Watenphul laughs very heartily, very loudly.

Even more so when he whispers to her with a daring grin: "Now you can say it." The two have been together since their twenties, have raised two sons together and are now sitting in front of his studio in a wonderful backyard in Lehel, unlike any other are in Munich.

"I was never afraid of him," says Watenphul, first smiling at her husband and then at the books with his works that are open on the garden table.

"I just wonder where it always comes from." By "that" she means the sometimes shrill, bitterly angry, coquettishly erotic, always very entertaining drawings and paintings that Rudi Hurzlmeier has been creating for decades.

Whether in caricatures for the satirical magazine "Titanic" or daily newspapers like the "SZ", whether in illustrations for books, on postcards or in his paintings - Hurzlmeier's comic art is a feast for the heart and brain.

Enjoying art like sour lozenges, wonderfully sweet and with an unmistakable finish.

Gabriella Watenphul and Rudi Hurzlmeier have been a couple for decades.

How to do it?

"Humor doesn't hurt!" © kjk

The term “funny art” is basically a cheek.

Hurzlmeier is a gifted painter and draftsman, but because in Germany laughter in museums only seems to be intended for children's tours, there are hardly any exhibitions of "funny artists" like Hurzlmeier in the big art institutions in this country.

As a native of Lower Bavaria and someone who will be 70 this year, he sees it calmly.

Rather, he is pleased that the Buchheim Museum in Bernried on Lake Starnberg is now celebrating him with a large show.

The Museum of Fantasy, the perfect place for its angels and devils, herds of horses, still lifes that are anything but still.

And for some mess.

In addition to the erotic pictures (“The ones I chose for Bernried are all family-friendly”) there are now also the little pigs, for which he is particularly well known.

As a child from the country, he wanted to help the four-legged friends to get a better reputation.

"It's a culture disgrace, how you deal with pigs.

So at some point I started drawing them as friendly fellow creatures.”

Rudi Hurzlmeier in his Munich studio.

© kjk

He had a sound collage created especially for Bernried.

Pig grunts, birdsong, rushing water, coughing.

His little dig at all those representatives of “serious art” who think they always have to look in museums with a particularly heavy load of meaning.

“The sound collage is intended to loosen things up a bit.

Enjoying art should be fun,” says Rudi Hurzlmeier.

He knows from successful exhibitions like the one on the Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel how well it goes down with the public when there is no high-flown air.

There is a high-quality collection of Dutch masters here.

In a summer academy for comic arts, as a director with 18 participants, he developed similar works, but with a funny twist.

They were hung between the pictures of the old masters.

And the visitors were overjoyed - perhaps this was what first inspired them to take a closer look at the Old Masters.

This is exactly why Hurzlmeier supports the association for a humor forum in Munich.

Also as a meeting point for the scene.

"With the tavern in the slaughterhouse and the Volkstheater in the immediate vicinity, this could become a real CULTURAL center - and one of the funnier kind."

also read

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Passion Play Oberammergau: political and entertaining

Met in Munich: Rudi Hurzlmeier and editor Katja Kraft.

© kjk

The question remains, where do they come from, the ideas for his sometimes very provocative pictures (please buy one of his first books antiquarian: "Friss oder die").

"Sometimes something comes to me in a dream, when I'm waking up.

These thoughts between sleeping and waking up are very fleeting, they're gone right away.

That's why I still sketch them in the dark.” And continues to dream on the pictures during the day.

As a viewer, you can join in – and that is fantastically beautiful.

Until September 25, Rudi Hurzlmeier's works can be seen in the Buchheim Museum, Am Hirschgarten 1, Bernried, Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

More information is available here