The painting “Jesus Birth” is a radiant eye-catcher with an exploding blaze of colors of blue, golden yellow and red in the chapel of the Evangelical Care Center in Ebenhausen. Mary, held by Joseph, holds a bundle of light in her hands between her thighs. Christ sees the light of day and is himself the light of the world in an intimate unity of father, mother and newborn. This could be the message of this expressive work by the Schäftlarn painter Traudl Klor. Klor had no plan to depict the highlights in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. “I didn’t have a series in mind for the Jesus cycle,” she says. “That had to mature in me, and there were great gaps between the individual pictures, sometimes years.” Now the series from Klor’s studio has found a worthy place in the chapel of the care center and can be viewed by residents, employees of the Diakoniehaus and its visitors.
The first high point in the life of Jesus, his birth, can of course also be seen without the Christian story, as a redeeming joy, for example, when parents hold their healthy baby in their arms. But only on closer inspection can one recognize the first phase after a birth from the flowing shapes of the heads, bodies, arms and legs of these three figures, which are wrapped in strongly colored fabrics. And that corresponds exactly to the concept that the director of the house, Wilfried Bogner, and the painter Traudl Klor came up with: The five pictures from the cycle – Birth, Flight into Egypt, Sermon on the Mount, Crucifixion and Descent from the Cross – should raise questions. With the background of religious narratives and just as without any imprints or reservations, one could consider, so Bogner: “What do I see, why do I see one more and the other less, what do I associate, what do I evaluate, what or how do I judge?”
Unheard of appeal
Perhaps some simply see colors and expressionist compositions or feel the moods and sensations that the respective motif radiates and spreads. In the “Sermon on the Mount”, for example, a painting in which the colors rust brown, ocher and black dominate with a little turquoise green, the astonished and concerned faces of the audience also express perplexity and discomfort. Jesus has just announced something unheard of to these people: “Love your neighbor as yourself!” The painter describes this picture as the third high point next to the first, the birth, and the second, the death on the cross. “It hit like a bomb,” she says. What an egregious imperative to love the closest person as much as you love yourself? That has totally called into question people’s egoism, she explains, and that is just as true today as it was then. Because the next one is everyone, neighbor, refugee, Jew, Muslim. People of all religions, worldviews, skin colors and nationalities.
In the future, one of the motifs is to be placed in the center of attention in the Friday prayers. Thoughts and feelings of all those who take part should flow freely. As a Protestant deacon, the head of the house loves the expressive power of the painter’s work. The figures in her pictures are physically almost noticeably present and establish an intensive connection with the viewer. Also in the picture stories nobody is ever alone, not even Jesus. Even in his loneliest dying hours on the cross, supposedly abandoned by God and the world, there are angelic beings with him who give consolation.
“Hands play a major role in Traudl Klor’s pictures,” says Bogner, “they are actually big and strong in all of the paintings.” The hands, he explains, are also a big and important issue for him when dealing with his residents. Hands that touch and make human connections. A topic that was often a painful one due to the lack of contact in times of Corona.
There are the topics that are important in a house for old people: comfort, touch, love, goodness, mercy. They are reflected in the five paintings from the Jesus cycle, which have now been added to the existing paintings by Traudl Klor as a “permanent loan” in the light-high chapel, which is also used for secular purposes: for St. Francis of Assisi and the Good Samaritan.
The Samaritan embraces the plundered and seriously injured man, hides and protects him between his legs like a child clasping the father’s knee. A passionate ball player recognized in the Samaritan’s strong orange knee a basketball and in himself an injured player who would have to be replaced. Yes, that is also allowed: The thoughts, sensations and feelings when looking at Klor’s paintings are individual, make some things conscious and can flow freely.