Birthday of the Human Rights!

My paintings of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

HURRAY!
Today is the birthday of Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
An occasion to realise what a great achievement these agreements are. 76 years ago, on December 10, 1948, more than 50 states adopted this joint agreement in Paris.

The work on the text of these declaration began in 1946 as a reaction to the terrible World War II and was written in less than two years. It proved to be a huge task to find a common denominator for the core of the document. For us women, the submission by the Indian Mrs Hansa Mehta was of great importance because she changed the sentence in article 1 „All men are born free and equal.“ to „All human are born free and equal.“ and ensured that women were finally unequivocally equal.

As important and necessary as this declaration seemed at the time, it has UNFORTUNATELY lost none of its relevance – quite the opposite. 77 years after the end of World War II, there is more cause than ever before: dictatorship, religious fanaticism, abuse of power, influencing elections in other countries, espionage and sabotage, extremism and xenophobia, … yes, the list is long. Almost endless.

As an artist I have been working since 2021 on the design of the 30 articles of Human Rights – one picture per year – without chronological order, but according to inspiration and current crises.

I started with Article 25 and decided at that time to depict a group of homeless people in a form language that recurs around the world. No matter where in the world people live without shelter, without medical care, without the necessary minimum standard of living, you see the same attributes: blankets and pieces of clothing against the nightly cold, leftover food from the garbage cans of the throwaway society and bags or sacks to carry their few belongings with them. I collected these pictures and put them together to form a collage, which I then painted in acrylic paint. I have created three articles using this process so far and this year’s is still in progress on my easel.