End of exhibition:
20. October 2024
The competition and exhibition “ART & Diversity - Impressions from the animal and plant world” will take place in Magdeburg for the eighth time in 2024. Every two years, the Museum für Naturkunde and the Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Magdeburg e.V. invite artists from the “Wildlife Art” genre to Magdeburg to present their latest works. The participants selected by the jury will compete for the jury prize, the “Guericke Unicorn”. The winner will be announced in the evening at the opening ceremony Saturday, June 29, 2024. The special exhibition shows portraits of wild animals and plants in their habitat or in their relationship with humans. The artistic representation of plants has been part of the program since 2020.
In January 2024, the jury selected a total of 23 artists from the pool of applicants who were allowed to participate in the exhibition with up to five works of art. From June 30, over 90 paintings, prints, sculptures and sculptures will be on display in the special exhibition. Artists from Germany and an artist from the Netherlands are taking part. A motif by Marjolein Kruit from Amersfoort in the Netherlands has also been selected for this year's exhibition title. Under the title “Red Autumn”, a bullfinch can be seen among red-colored leaves. The 2020 jury prize winner Tamara Pokorny is also participating again with a small work. This time, the specialist for black and white scratchboard motifs is breaking new ground and working in color. Eugen Kisselmann from Seehausen/Altmark paints water in his pictures like no other artist. “Gift of the Lake” is the title of his new oil painting in the 2024 competition, showing a hooded crow fishing a mussel out of the shallows. In another work entitled “Fire dragonfly”, the title motif fades completely into the background and the viewer is fascinated by the insect's habitat: clear shallow water in a lake with slight wave action.
The exhibition is the result of the art competition for the “Guericke Unicorn”, which is organized every two years by the Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Magdeburg e.V. and the Museum für Naturkunde. The prize is awarded to artists who depict wild animals and plants in a realistic way and thus creatively realize the theme “Biodiversity of our Earth”. With the exhibition, the museum aims to preserve and promote the tradition of nature-realistic animal depiction and give this art form its own forum.
The “Guericke Unicorn”, a 17 cm high bronze sculpture, commemorates Otto von Guericke's 1672 report on the discovery of a unicorn in Quedlinburg - one of the earliest scientific interpretations of fossil bone finds.
At the opening ceremony of the exhibition on Saturday, June 29, 2024, at 15:00, the Natural Science Association will once again award the jury prize. For the duration of the exhibition, visitors will then have the opportunity to vote for their favorites and determine the 2024 Audience Award.
