Max Uhlig

The Dresden artist Max Uhlig (b. 1937) created one of the greatest window cycles of contemporary art for the Gothic Church of Saint John in Magdeburg. Vines and coloured foliage together with lines in expressive rhythms which are a revelation in their incisiveness, fill a window area of some 350 square metres with colours and immerse the interior of the church in light.

The abstract cycle of six windows in colour and seven in black and white, each 13 metres high, tells of the rebirth of the former parish church in the heart of Magdeburg, destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt after 1992. The dark earth tones and the luminous yellows and blues interspersed with fiery reds contrast with the vines climbing upwards in the choir windows, which are depicted entirely in black. Max Uhlig is one of the last representatives of plein-air painting in modern art and shows in this magnificent volume about his latest masterpiece that he is at the very height of our times.