Zilkens'
News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 40 2026

Art can influence and enrich entrepreneurs. Between 1896 and 1899, Giovanni Segantini created ‘Becoming, Being, Passing’, his monumental work of symbolic Alpine painting, originally intended for a world exhibition; it is now housed in the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz. Life cycles feature in the works of many artists. Caspar David Friedrich also captured this in a single painting. However, Segantini had a lasting influence on Reinhold Würth, who recently reiterated this in Pioneer. At some point, everything takes on a sense of transience – one can only escape this by constantly striving to become, rather than resting on one’s laurels. In Western civilisation, we have generally enjoyed relative peace for more than 80 years; existential hardships are, thanks to extensive social welfare systems, something of a foreign concept. Some believe that the unconditional basic income is the key to all happiness. This complacency in one’s existence no longer compels us to become – rather, it fosters decay. Ultimately, it also describes the problematic developments in our democracy, where the established powers, out of sheer complacency, have forgotten to provide the impetus that enables growth. It sounds abstract – but why do we hear talk of reducing bureaucracy without seeing it in practice? Why do more than 25 per cent of voters in the current German capital vote for a party that is, in parts, anti-Semitic, wants to abolish the security apparatus and associates with clan-based criminals who could not care less about our cultural heritage? Why is there a push to lower the voting age below the legal age of legal capacity? Because the ideological fringes stand to gain from it? We must once again become more active in the process of becoming if we wish to preserve freedom and the opportunities for prosperity for all.

Fifty years ago, the Cologne Theatre opened its season with Gorky’s The Lower Depths, directed by Roberto Ciulli. It is not only the Cologne Opera that has returned to its old home after 14 years – the theatre next door had suffered the same fate. That said, Cologne has once again been very fortunate in its choice of theatre director: Kay Voges. In Salzburg, people are wondering why the man only stages world premieres. Is it because then one doesn’t have to be judged against existing productions and interpretations? For Friday’s premiere, he staged a commissioned play whose title could well be claimed by property developers as being ‘in a prime location’. The content was so shallow that it later became clear why there was no interval – apart from the hired clappers, the theatre would have been pretty empty – even though the actors put in a decent performance. But you can’t compensate for shallow content. It was a different story today – in Tag und Nacht (Day and Night), Lily Sykes drew just about everything out of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s text and gave the actors the opportunity to achieve something great. That’s another reason to come to Cologne.

In 14 days’ time, we’ll be discontinuing the English version of our news blog and Kobels Kunstwoche. There are now so many reasonably decent translation programmes that anyone can translate this text into their own language without too much effort. We owe the English version to the Mexican gallery owner Pablo Goebel, who asked for it years ago. A request gladly fulfilled – but Pablo, even using a translation programme, you’ll still get all the necessary information from Kobel’s Art Week.

Have a good start to the first proper week of autumn, which in some places feels like late summer

Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne