UNESCO cultural heritage - reverse glass painting in the Mühlviertel
The first reverse glass painters from northern Bohemia arrived in the Sandl region around 1760. They taught the locals the techniques of painting, cutting and mirroring. Today, 242 years later, reverse glass painting is still deeply rooted in the Mühlviertel, so deeply that UNESCO has declared the tradition an intangible national cultural heritage. In the past, painting was an important economic factor for the region for more than a hundred years.
60,000 pictures were produced each year. Today, there are still four active reverse glass painters. However, the technique has not changed: The peculiarity of the reverse glass technique is that you paint from the foreground to the background. In other words, exactly the opposite of painting on canvas. You start by painting through the contours of the cracked drawing on the glass plate. The resulting areas are then filled in with oil colours. The advantage of this was that a picture painted behind glass could simply be wiped clean in the sooty parlours. And then the dark walls would glow with colour again. The tradition has been passed down from generation to generation and still reaches the youth of Mühlviertel in the age of Facebook and the like. In the reverse glass museum in Sandl you can marvel at around 150 reverse glass paintings made in the 1800s and up to the end of the 19th century.
In May, the annual symposium takes place in the Sandl reverse glass museum. Anyone interested is warmly welcome to attend.
Hinterglasgemeinde Sandl
GemeindeamtSandl 24
4251 Sandl
Phone +43 7944 8255-0
E-Mail gemeinde@sandl.ooe.gv.at
Web sandl.at/
