Rolf Jährling
The visit to the National Socialist Entartete Kunst propaganda exhibition in Munich in the same year brought him into contact with Modern Art even before the outbreak of World War II.
A friend, who was an attaché at the embassy in Athens, christened his room "Parnassus three stories high", thus giving birth to the name of his gallery, which also has a reference to the Montparnasse in Paris.
Probably the first penthouse in Germany[1] offered a light-flooded exhibition and work room on the top floor, a promenade-like roof terrace and a built-in studio stage for various productions.
In April 1950, Jean-Paul Sartre's Huit Clos (Closed Society) was staged here under the direction of Paul Pörtner and in February 1952 Jean Cocteau's La voix humaine (Beloved Voice).
[7] In 1954, Jährling met his future wife Anneliese (née Schu, 1923-2010), a dentist with a doctorate who came to his gallery as a visitor, at Alte Freiheit.
Important representatives such as Francis Bott, Peter Brüning, Rolf Cavael, Karl Fred Dahmen, Albert Fürst, Hans Hartung, Gerhard Hoehme, Heinz Kreutz, André Lanskoy, Bernard Schultze, Emil Schumacher, Jaroslaw Serpan, Heinz Trökes, François Willi Wendt and WOLS as well as the sculptor Norbert Kricke exhibited at Galerie Parnass from 1951.
The exhibitions were always opened by renowned art critics and theorists, including Pierre Restany, Franz Roh, Albert Schulze-Vellinghausen, John Anthony Thwaites, Eduard Trier and the Düsseldorf gallery owner Jean-Pierre Wilhelm.
This exhibition at Galerie Parnass became the first bridge between the abstract and surrealist roots underlying informal art, from artists such as Hans Arp, Max Ernst and Raoul Ubac to the contemporary avant-garde such as Peter Brüning, Albert Fürst, Winfred Gaul, Karl Otto Götz and Gerhard Hoehme.
[10] The stately Art Nouveau villa of the collector Klaus Gebhard at Moltkestraße 67 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, which Rolf and Anneliese Jährling moved into in December 1961, offered space for the architectural office, the gallery and a private apartment.
[13] In March 1963, a second solo exhibition took place at Galerie Parnass, which Jährling had offered to the South Korean artist Nam June Paik.
In the entrance door of the villa hung a chopped-off ox's head suspended on cords, which had been delivered fresh from the slaughterhouse that morning and, according to Paik, was part of a shamanistic ritual.
In addition, the participants of the happening - the guests - were locked in a sparsely lit barred cage in the factory building of a weaving mill; an artificial "guard dog" simulated a threatening living situation.
Konrad Fischer-Lueg, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Manfred Kuttner, then still students at the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie, had leaned their works, some of them large-scale, against the wall of the house and against the trees and bushes in the snow-covered front garden.
[24] Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Konrad Lueg had their actual exhibition, entitled New Realists, on November 20, 1964, but without the participation of Manfred Kuttner.
The artists Joseph Beuys, Bazon Brock, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Eckart Rahn, Tomas Schmit and Wolf Vostell spread out in the various rooms of the villa, the floor plan of which can be seen on the event poster[25] – various activities took place everywhere.
[27] At the end of the 24 hours, the letters formed the text "According to experimental results, one gram of cobra venom kills 83 dogs, 715 rats, 330 rabbits or 134 humans".
[29] The concert by Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, who played pieces by John Cage, Morton Feldman, La Monte Young and Ludwig van Beethoven, caused the biggest stir.
Wolf Vostell's pieces of meat and offal lying around in the garden were buried, and Stella Baum gave them Jacutin tablets, a fumigant against storage pests and other vermin such as bugs and flies in rooms.
[32][33] As Rolf and Anneliese Jährling had decided to travel through Africa in a VW bus in 1965, they bid farewell with one last lavish party and the announcement that they intended to open an architecture firm in Kenya with an adjoining gallery for European-African art exchange.
It contains, partly on two bound Leporellos, photographs by Ute Klophaus, notes and texts by the actors, such as Das Mittelwort by Rolf Jährling, Charlotte Moorman's cello, the Energy Plan by Joseph Beuys and Pensée 1965 by Nam June Paik, who in it ruminates on cybernetics and drugs and prophesies the victory of conceptual art over popular mass art.
In addition, the book object contains a square cut-out in the back section across several pages, in which a plastic bag filled with flour by Wolf Vostell is wedged.
At the same time, Anneliese Jährling, who had become interested in modern art through her husband, began producing textile sculptures of various sizes in Addis Ababa using the crochet technique.
[42] After his return from Addis Ababa in 1975, Rolf Jährling lived in seclusion in Weidingen in the Eifel until his death in 1991, but with a keen interest in art.
Large parts of the collection are now in the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, such as the Mobile/Stabile by Calder from 1952, Schumacher's Lichtes Feld from 1955, Schulze's In Memoriam Altdorfer, created around 1949, the Kleine Hymne an Blau by Hoehme from 1956, a Kruzifix from 1946 by Ubac or Vostell's Cobaleleda from 1958.
It was conceived as a tribute to the work of Galerie Parnass; the opening was attended by many visitors and a number of companions, including Bazon Brock, Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik, who had already been present at the 24-Stunden-Happening.
