Winterpioniere

Winterpioniere (Winter Pioneers) brings together rare historical photographs from the Karl Max Kessler Archive with the contemporary context of Pi (π) Art Project in Frankfurt am Main.

Between 1907 and 1960, Karl Max Kessler documented the emergence of skiing in the Kleinwalsertal, at a moment when winter landscapes shifted from sites of labour and survival to spaces of exploration, sport and shared imagination.

The exhibition presents 10 × 15 cm glass negatives alongside carefully produced prints: skiers in motion, early pioneers in untouched snow, and wide alpine landscapes that speak of endurance, curiosity and joy. Seen today, against the backdrop of international winter sports events, the images read as quiet witnesses to a formative chapter of alpine culture.

Alongside the archival works, Mathias Kessler shows charcoal drawings from his series After Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice. For the artist the archive is also personal memory: having grown up among images of snow-rich alpine winters, he returned after decades in New York to a valley increasingly dependent on artificial snow. The drawings, developed as the basis for a 3D animation built on 200 years of climate data, trace the gradual melting of ice.

Winterpioniere is both a homage to the beginnings of skiing and a reflection on winter itself: as memory, as cultural practice, and as a fragile landscape shaped by time.