Remarkable exhibition
The artistic side of boxing
By Martin Armbruster, Cologne
March 11, 2024, 11:55 a.m
Boxing and art – two supposedly completely different worlds. Artworks about fighters and fights have been part of boxing for decades. An exhibition in Cologne now shows the great legends of sport. ntv.de took a look at it.
Richard T. Slone painted many boxers. Also the greatest of all, Muhammad Ali. After his first defeat as a prizefighter in 1971 against Joe Frazier, the American swung the brush. The image of Frazier’s left hook exploding on the heavyweight legend’s chin is history. Boxing history. Art history.
8th of March. The date for the vernissage “Legends in the Ring: Boxing Art that Blows Your Mind” in the Cologne Sports and Olympic Museum was right. After all, Muhammad Ali had just taken to the boards on this day 53 years ago in New York and was demoted to a loser between the ring ropes for the first time. Liked by the elemental power of Joe Frazier. Captured forever. From photographers. But also by artists like Slone, who brought the monumental scene to the canvas with acrylic.
The duel between legendary rivals Ali and Frazier was advertised at the time as “The Fight”. Because the 15-round spectacle was so good, it was called “The Fight of the Century”.
“It’s great when these two worlds come together”
A century of fistfights and something more has been hanging on the walls in Cologne since Friday evening. Ali and Frazier. Max Schmeling. Joe Louis. Mike Tyson. But also modern gladiators like Floyd Mayweather, Tyson Fury or the Mexican superstar Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. The works were compiled by art collector Ingo Wegerich.
Wegrich, a lawyer from Frankfurt am Main, describes himself as a “lover” in Cologne; of art and boxing. “It’s great when these two worlds come together,” he says enthusiastically, while around 150 interested people gather around the paintings of the pugilists. Very few of them are at home in both worlds.
Ingo Wegenich came to boxing while studying law in Hamburg, the boxing capital of Germany in the 1990s. The smell of the hall, the fight man against man. That fascinated him, he says. Later,Planet traveled around the world to watch major fights live. In 2008 he met the artist Richard T. Slone in Las Vegas. The American has been painting boxers for decades, including for “The Ring” magazine, the “Bible of Boxing”. In 1971 it was Ali and Frazier, and in 2017 Slone was commissioned to portray Gennadiy Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez on a screen before their showdown in Las Vegas. When the middleweights fought in Las Vegas, Plantain was there again – and decided to buy Slone’s artwork.
“I want this to be accepted as art”
What did he have to shell out for it? The 54-year-old doesn’t talk about that in detail. The “Spiegel” writes of a low five-figure amount, the “Welt” of a higher five-figure amount. Well. Ingo Wegich doesn’t want to be the center of attention himself, but rather gives the artists’ works a stage. “I want this to be accepted as art,” he said in an interview with ntv.de in Cologne.
Plantain’s fever was ignited after purchasing his first “Slone.” He has now acquired 100 paintings. Some of them served as covers for “Ring Magazine”, such as a picture of Max Schmeling after his sensational victory over Joe Louis in 1936, when the German heavyweight was suddenly “The Man of The Hour”. Louis is also part of Plantain’s collection. A 1937 Ring title shows the “Brown Bomber” posed. Ready to fight Schmeling, whom the Nazis had hyped up after his triumph as the star athlete of the Aryan master race. Behind Louis there is a US fighter plane and a bomb detonates on the ground. The duel man against man as a harbinger of world war. In 1938, the “brown bomber” severely knocked out his opponent after 124 seconds. Freedom against fascism, it was said. And: fight of the century.
Boxing and art – this connection has existed for around 100 years, especially through journalism. In the 1930s it was common practice to commission artists to create a cover. Back then, paintings were sharper and more precise than photographs, and they could also be printed in color.
The “noble art of self-defense”
Ingo Wegerich has what many pairs of eyes dream of. “Doug Fischer, the editor-in-chief of Ring Magazine, has never seen the originals,” he reveals. Because of his passion, the lawyer is now well connected in the boxing scene. Heavyweight champions Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk have signed his pictures. So does the very rich Floyd Mayweather, the face of boxing for many years. More than 70,000 people follow Wegrich’s channel “Fine Art” on Instagram. The “noble art of self-defense” as a social media phenomenon.
Wegrich hopes that the boxing art will be accepted – and that the exhibition in Cologne is just the beginning. With the venerable English trade magazine “Boxing News”, which also uses works of art as covers, he is looking for sponsors to present the works in London. Because most of the time the legendary pictures hang in the Frankfurt commercial law firm where Wegerich works. Ali, Schmeling, Louis, Mayweather, Tyson – in hallways and offices, in the orbit of tax paragraphs. Plantain would rather show it to the world.
“The pictures should actually be exhibited in Las Vegas or New York,” he says. However, such an undertaking would be incredibly difficult to realize financially. Plantain also has a real Ali in his collection. A few years ago, he purchased a sketch at auction that Muhammad Ali made after he converted to Islam. Does the boxing legend’s scribble qualify as art? Irrelevant. It is definitely a document of contemporary history. Boxing has always had a meaning that goes far beyond sport, which is perhaps why it has always attracted people from the “cultural world” – directors, writers, artists. This symbiosis can be experienced in Cologne over the next six weeks.