Gesichter einer Stadt

"Faces of a City – Gesichter einer Stadt" is a large-scale mural located at the Bürgerhof in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. The work was created in 2003 as part of the Kultursommer Rheinland-Pfalz and was initiated and carried out by the Kunsthaus Oggersheim. According to the information plaque on the building, the idea and implementation were by Marina Kiehns, with support from Bernd Pfütze.

The mural consists of a large number of portraits showing people of different ages and appearances. The faces are arranged densely across the façade and are rendered in a wide variety of styles, ranging from relatively realistic portraits to simplified and expressive depictions. Strongly contrasting areas of yellow, green, red, violet and blue give the composition a particularly vivid appearance.

The artists listed on the plaque are Olga Skorikova-Gebhardt, Helmut van der Buchholz, Ulrich Thul, Artur Kurkowski, Maria Kireeva, Hilmi Kapan and Alexander Schmidt.

The project was conceived as a portrait of Ludwigshafen's population. Contemporary documentation describes the mural as consisting of numerous portraits of citizens and visitors to the city. In this sense, Gesichter einer Stadt can be understood as a collective artistic portrait of Ludwigshafen and its inhabitants.