Art with saw and fire.

From Jutta Perino

When people look at her sculptures, Gabriele von Lutzau wants to see “salvation”. Together with five other artists, the sculptor is currently designing a “temporary cultural zone” for the second time on the premises of a former bank in Frankfurt. With this project, she tries to awaken vacant rooms to a “new exciting life, so that they become free spaces and leeway for fantasy, commitment, constructive debate and dreams”.

The initiator of the exhibition, Gabriele von Lutzau, shows sculptures in the form of guardian figures, wings, feathers, hearts, life signs and birds. The objects are made of wood, bronze or iron. What she wants to express is:”The power of lightness, love and lust for life against the power of terror, death and the shackles of the world.

She came to art through a pottery course. But she soon realized that sound was not the right material for her. Soon she discovered the wood she worked with chisel and chisel. “I have the talent to look into things. I know what’s in it,”she says of herself. In a car accident in New Zealand, her right wrist was shattered and it quickly became clear that she could not become a classical sculptor. But as a lioness, you can’t tell me that something doesn’t work,”explains Gabriele von Lutzau. What’s she doing? She turns to the chainsaw. She has been working wood with chain saw and fire for about 20 years now. Here, too, she doesn’t choose the soft trunks, no, she works hardest thuja trees. “In front of the chainsaw, I was terrified at first,” she recalls. But with this tool she succeeds in giving wood a “different dimension”. She releases “pieces of wood grown in agony with chain saw and fire”. “Sometimes,” she says,”I feel like I’m saving the wood.”

Born in Wolfsburg in 1954 as Gabriele Dillmann, the artist came to Frankfurt with her parents as a baby. At first she worked as a flight attendant at Lufthansa. In 1977 she was on board the “Landshut”, kidnapped by a Palestinian terrorist command. It was an important support for the passengers during the hostage drama – and was described by the tabloid press as “Angel of Mogadishu”. Today, she says:”I only did my job properly”, and after the liberation of the machine by GSG 9, the then Chancellor Helmut Schmidt awarded her with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. After her marriage Gabriele von Lutzau moved with her family to Michelstadt in the Odenwald. Gabriele von Lutzau feels like a real “Frankfurt girl”. She is closely connected to her hometown.

With her exhibitions in empty bank buildings, she wants to give Frankfurt’s citizens an understanding of her art. Under the name “Kunsträume II”, the works can be viewed every Wednesday until 13 December from 2 p. m. to 6 p. m. at Guiollettstraße 54.