Key Experience Banana

by Peter Fabian, 2002

Rheinberg on Niederrhein, 1983: a Catholic hospital, a crucifix that had fallen off the wall, Œcrucifying‚ a banana skin on the cross: a key experience which causes the civil servant Thomas Baumgärtel to study art at university. At university, given the task of painting still-life of fruit, it soon became evident to him – overcoming the academic mentality of a painter – that the banana was his one and only motif. In 1986, during a night filled with spray can activities, Baumgärtel positions his first banana graffiti on the gallery gates in the Belgian quarter in Cologne. Today, 17 years later, his banana marks appear in close to 4000 art locations between Moscow and New York. A long-term concept described by Dr Reinhold Mißelbeck of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne as "the greatest dadaistic action in art history". In view of impending criminal charges, Thomas Baumgärtel, at first active only under the pseudonym "Banana Sprayer", has been participating since the late 1980s in international exhibitions. With ironic reference to his former professors, he still today produces "fruit paintings" in acrylic on canvass; but what look like over-sized apples, pears or lemons, are composed of many small bananas.