Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 120 cm
Medusa is an example of Marlene Reucher's interpretation of Greek mythology. There, Medusa was a Gorgon, one of three frighteningly ugly sisters, whose sight would turn anyone who looked at her to stone. She was the only Gorgon who was mortal and was decapitated by the hero Perseus by a trick. Legend has it that she was originally a beautiful woman who was transformed by the goddess Athena into a monster with snake hair, boar's teeth and a protruding tongue. In the hope to get rid of him, Polydektos, king of Seriphos, asked Perseus to bring him the head of Medusa. With the help of the goddess Athena, Hermes, the messenger of the gods,  and the nymphs, Perseus succeeded in beheading her. However, he did not give her head to Polydektos, but kept it for himself. Perseus had further adventures in which the head of Medusa was extremely useful to him. Among other things, he held it out in a dispute with the titan Atlas, who then turned to stone (today's reference to this myth is the Atlas Mountains in Morocco). "Atlas" is also a sculpture by the artist couple Geiter, which is shown in the park of the academy. Since at least the 7th century B.C., artists have been working with the myth of Medusa in various forms, both artistically and literarily.

Excerpts from Roswitha Jungfleisch's laudatory speech on the occasion of the exhibition "Ansichten" by Marlene Reucher at the Europäische Akademie Otzenhausen in September 2010: "Colors, bright as a summer day in Provence, are the primary means with which Marlene Reucher creates her expressive pictures. She mainly exhibits abstract or abstracted landscapes in acrylic on canvas. A second focus of her work is the works of classical literature, which she uses as a basis for her paintings. She feels less the need to tell us about the peculiarity of a living being or the character of a landscape in detail. With her pictures she does not want to teach us what and how to see something more precisely. Rather, she presents us her own creation. She trusts in the inspiration by the motifs themselves, by memories, sensations. Under her hands, the motifs emerge anew, landscapes, animals and plants that they have already encountered in nature. Images from the soul - or as Marlene Reucher put it more prosaically: "from the gut". In doing so, she emphasizes again and again how important it is to her to have the freedom to present her subjects the way she sees and feels them, independent of trends and fashions".

Marlene Reucher (*1933 in Völklingen, Germany) lives and works in Saarbrücken. She came late to painting, with which she has been intensively engaged since 1982. She exhibited at the academy in 2003 ("Malerei") and 2010 ("Ansichten", together with Gabi Michel). The versatile artist paints in acrylic on canvas, silk paper, paper, in mixed media and collages. Etching, styrofoam printing, monotype and screen printing are also part of her artistic means of expression. Her abstract works are partly inspired by literary models and also deal with Greek mythology. Many of them are characterised by a colorfulness which in turn is based on impressions of the artist from the Lubéron in the French Provence.