Oil on canvas, 160 x 100 cm
It was not only mining that shaped the Saarland, but also steel processing as a downstream industry. Even today, Saarland is still one of the major locations of the German steel industry, along with the Ruhr area, among others. Steel companies throughout Saarland, but also the World Cultural Heritage Site at the Völklinger Hütte as a rededicated steel mill, are examples of an industry that shapes the lives of the people of the Greater Region. A steel mill is - also - a world of fire and metal, glowing heat, gigantic blast furnaces and roaring machines. Herbig-Reichmann captures its elemental force in bright red and yellow in the form of a gigantic fire roller on the screen.

Barbara Herbig-Reichmann (*1940 in Breslau, today Wrocław, Poland) studied in Berlin and Trier, among other places. She exhibited at the academy in 2002 ("Developments", oil painting). She describes her art like this:
"I work in my studios in Saarbrücken (painting) and Nonnweiler in Hunsrück (wood and metal works). Impressed by the pictorial and color world of the Expressionists, I move between the figurative and the abstract. I realise my ideas of painting, drawing or graphics with oil, acrylic but also oil soot, sand or ash. Especially the use of ash is proof of my interest in anchoring my pictorial themes, ontologically. The cyclical process of passing and becoming is of particular interest to me. Nature and the natural is always addressed. Ash is the result of material transformation and humus for new life. I remain attached to a "realistic" model of nature, but its appearances are merely the occasion for a mental structure in form and colour. Between a classical staggering of depth space and abstract colour harmonies, the viewer is encouraged to immerse himself in this pictorial world. Since 1992, my works have found attention in numerous, mostly solo exhibitions at home and abroad in public buildings, churches, art associations and museums. My works are in private and public ownership."