Individual Artworks
The individual works on display at the University of Mannheim provide insight into various artistic movements, eras, and social discourses. They invite visitors to discover the diversity and development of art and society up close.
Dr. Manfred Fuchs: Three paintings in the FUCHS Festsaal
The three acrylic paintings titled “blau-gelb-schwarz” (Blue-Yellow-Black), “Rote Lava” (Red Lava) and “Stadt am Meer” (City by the Sea) can be seen in the FUCHS Festsaal on the first floor of the Ostflügel of the University of Mannheim.
The paintings are a valuable addition to the university and help to give the Festsaal a lively color scheme and expressiveness. Their style blends in with the ambience of the hall and harmonizes very well with the murals on the front and end walls.
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Profile
From 1958 to 1962, Dr. Manfred Fuchs studied Business Administration at the Wirtschaftshochschule Mannheim, the predecessor of today’s University of Mannheim. He earned his doctorate in Political Science in 1964. In 1962, he assumed management of Rudolph Fuchs Mineralölwerk KG and later became personally liable partner of the family-owned company. Following its conversion into a GmbH & Co. KG in 1972, Dr. Fuchs was appointed Managing Director. In 1984, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Fuchs Petrolub AG and served as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Fuchs Petrolub SE (now Fuchs SE) from 2003 to 2017.
Since the 1990s, Dr. Fuchs has been among the most important sponsors of the University of Mannheim. In recognition of his outstanding commitment, the university appointed him Honorary Senator in 2000. In 2014, he was named an honorary citizen of the Mannheim.
Alongside his entrepreneurial career, Dr. Fuchs has pursued painting with great passion since his teenage years. Selected works of Dr. Fuchs have already been displayed on the ground floor of the University in 2006.
Fred Emmerich: Hafen (Habor)
Since August 2023, Hafen (Harbor), a painting by Fred Emmerich, has been on display in the Senatssaal.
The Mannheim-based artists brings together a wide range of international influences in his work. Created over a period of ten years, the painting reveals—upon closer inspection—multiple layers of overpainting. It depicts colorful boats rendered in subdued tones, anchored on a lake beneath a gray sky.
Heftige Malerei (Gestural Painting)—On loan from Deutsche Bank
Marked by intense color and dynamic gesture, Heftige Malerei emerged in the late 1970s as a form of vehement, gestural painting that deliberately distanced itself from the dominant positions of Minimal and Conceptual Art. Emphasizing physical intensity, expressive brushwork, and the act of painting itself, artists of this movement sought to reassert the immediacy of painterly expression. Through their neo-expressive works, a young generation revitalized painting as a medium at that time.
The Deutsche Bank Collection holds a substantial collection of paintings and works on paper by these artists, a selection of which has been on loan to the Hasso Plattner Library in the central building of the Schloss since 2008.