Update reverse glass painting

Was the age of reverse glass painting over in Bavaria, Bohemia and Upper Austria around 1900? Industrially produced colour prints moved into rural parlours and chapels as devotional images and wall decorations. They replaced the images of saints from Winklarn in the Upper Palatinate Forest, Neukirchen b. Hl. Blut or Raimundsreut in the Bavarian Forest, Klatovy, Domažlice, Všeruby, Kvilda and Pohoří na Šumavě on the Czech side or Sandl in the Mühlviertel in Upper Austria, which had been painstakingly painted behind glass for generations. Who appreciated and collected the old pictures later - the museums? And who was so impressed by the luminosity of the reverse glass paintings that they picked up a brush, paint and glass plate themselves?
While some focussed on preserving and reviving the old, others had to break with tradition in order to find new artistic expression on the fragile painting surface. The exhibition "Update reverse glass painting" presents the results of this search for traces in the region.
It spans a wide range: from the popular, workshop-based reverse glass painting of the so-called "Neukirchen School" of the 18th and 19th centuries, on display in the exhibition collection of the Pilgrimage Museum, and from other painting locations in the Upper Palatinate Forest, Bavarian Forest and Bohemian Forest, to the exploration of this theme in contemporary art in the region.
A wide range of reverse glass paintings is presented: historical images of religious devotion, images in the context of (re)discovered "folk art" and collecting, as a form of creative leisure activity from around 1970 and as a subject in the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
For example, there are reverse glass paintings by the artists Helmut Sturm, Heiko Herrmann, Kurt von Unruh, Walter Mauder, Erwin Pohl and August Philipp Henneberger, as well as by the artists Irene Fastner, Heike Pillemann and Ulla Schmidt-Pesch.
There are also pictures by people who have been painting behind glass in their free time or in retirement since around 1970/80 or who are currently painting behind glass:
Josef Weber from Roding, Siegfried Kaml from Lam, Robert Haimerl from Furth im Wald, Theresia Haimerl from Ränkam, Franziska Baumann from Bad Kötzting, Christine Fischer from Cham and Günther Bauernfeind from Viechtach, the folklorist and former director of the Neukirchen b. Hl. Blut Pilgrimage Museum. The exhibition also shows examples of contemporary Czech reverse glass painters from the fields of art, professional and amateur painting. Well-known names include Jana Brožová from Klatovy and Jiří Honnis from South Bohemia, an award-winning "bearer of the tradition of folk crafts" in the Czech Republic.
A programme of events will accompany the exhibition and a bilingual publication will be published.
The project "Update Hinterglasmalerei" is funded by the European Union in the Interreg Bavaria - Czech Republic 2021-2027 programme, small project fund of the Euregio Bayerischer Wald - Böhmerwald - Unterer Inn, in the area of culture and sustainable tourism.

Last edited on 20.05.2025