A Community from 1982 to 2017
KÖL-TÜR was an international artists’ group that existed from 1982 to 2017. Its members met regularly, created works together and organized group exhibitions. KÖL-TÜR was founded by Gönül Sen-Menzel, and the meetings took place in her studio on Volkhovener Weg in Cologne. With Gönül Sen-Menzel’s death, KÖL-TÜR lost its founding member, and the group was finally dissolved in 2017.
The group had planned a summer market for June 28, 2014. Instead, a memorial exhibition in her studio took place that day. It was the last time KÖL-TÜR came together before it was dissolved, presenting the members’ works alongside those of Gönül Sen-Menzel to a wide audience.
The following texts about the members come from the former website sen-menzel.com and were last updated in January 2019.
Members
Gönül Sen-Menzel
Gönül Sen-Menzel was the founding member of the KÖL-TÜR group. She was born in Turkey in 1949 and lived in Cologne from 1981. She was an art teacher and painter, and saw her studio in Cologne-Volkhoven as a temple of encounter and a meeting place for artists and friends from many countries.
She painted a great deal, intensely and very fast – with music and to music. She experimented almost without limits with the variety of colors, themes and techniques, and was always looking for new ideas. She also wrote books: what began as a hobby with 24 children’s books became a passion.
The KÖL-TÜR group simply grew over many years, probably out of the friendships that developed along the way. Regular meetings in different places, painting together, discussing, critiquing, exhibiting and staging events all contributed. This led to deep friendship, helpfulness and solidarity. Above all, the members’ critique of each other’s work played a decisive part in keeping KÖL-TÜR alive for so long.
Georges Herregods
The Belgian priest Georges Herregods (born March 25, 1926, in Ronse; died March 2017) was one of the first members. He was full of energy, a modern pastor who painted beautiful watercolors from life models on Saturdays and celebrated Mass in church on Sundays.
He was also a well-known sculptor whose very expressive sculptures dealt with Christian themes using the means of contemporary art. His ceramics with biblical motifs could be seen in major churches in Belgium. Georges Herregods devoted himself not only to religious subjects but also to everyday life; he designed tableware and other ceramic objects. He was a humorous cartoonist and painter at the same time, letting the people in his pictures speak with big eyes, whether the theme was biblical or everyday. Until his death, Georges Herregods was a bundle of energy and full of surprises.
Walter Tuning
Another member of the group is Walter Tuning, son of the well-known Flemish artist Gaston Theunynck, whose paintings are held by many museums.
To follow his own artistic path, the son, born in 1941, calls himself Walter Tuning. Having started painting as a child, he has become a well-known landscape painter. He uses colors in all their variety to make the landscape tangible as he sees it. He lives in and with nature, in a beautiful landscape that seems made for becoming a landscape artist. While he initially worked mainly with oil and palette knife, today he plays with colors and uses every technique. He paints so quickly and intensely that the eye can sometimes hardly follow his hand. For him it is almost normal to have a sudden idea during an exhibition, take paint and brush out of his pocket and start painting. The same can happen in a restaurant, where the tablecloth becomes the “canvas”. His passion is painting, and painting alone.
Guido Mario Mosler
Natural scientist and experimental photographer. His work with optical systems led him to blur photography. His series focus mainly on reflections, bokeh, pinhole cameras and optical aids. Deliberate blur gives the imagination room to unfold, offering parallel spaces to apparent reality. An advocate of subjective photography.
Alper Kara
1970 born in Cologne
1985 began painting and drawing
1997 studied for three years with the painter Edip Ergun
2000 deepened his painting and life drawing with Gönül Sen-Menzel
Since 2000 member of the KÖL-TÜR group
Further Members of KÖL-TÜR
Fatoş Y. Dageförde · Juliette Daubner · Hüseyin Macar · Gila Dünnebeil · Bettina Marquard · Ute Kenzler · Irmel Pepperhof · Angelika Gurov · Friederike Graben
