THE STRUGGLE OF JACOB the-struggle-of-jacob | Page 5

THE OCCASION
In May 2016 I exhibited in Rome at the Teatro San Genesio
thanks to a contact of my sister Stella. The exhibition was
titled “PROCEDERE”. On that occasion, the exhibition was visited
by Prof. Yvonne Dohna Schlobitten, my sister's colleague at
the Pontificia Università Gregoriana (the Pontifical Gregorian
University), lecturer in the Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at
the Faculty of History and Cultural Heritage of the Church.
During that time Yvonne was curating a project that began in
2015 - a series of courses, lectures, exhibitions and conferences -
aimed at exploring the connection between sacred and
contemporary art, a reflection already promoted by Pope John
Paul II and encouraged by Pope Francis. The theme of the
project was precisely The Struggle of Jacob, taken as a meta-
phor for the artist's own spiritual, ethical and existential conflict.
The project culminated in September 2016 with a week of
spiritual retreat, development, and art workshop, at Sankt
Peter in Cologne, a Gothic church rebuilt after the bombing of
1943 and used since the end of the eighties as an
experimental center for contemporary art (above all music
and installations), the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Köln.
In this space they have exhibited some of the greatest
contemporary artists, among whom are Joseph Beuys; Jannis
Kounellis; Francis Bacon; Keith Haring; Antoni Tàpies; Eduardo
Chillida; Markus Lüpertz; Motoi Yamamoto; etc.