Die Klarwelt der Seligen (von Kupfer's Arcadian dreams)

This circular frescoe Die Klarwelt der Seligen was painted by von Kupfer in his house at Minusio, close to Locarno (Switzerland). Mixing together mysticism and sensuality, spirituality and homoeroticism, this impressive painting is an hymn to the male beauty and love, in a paradisiac landscape.

Von Gloeden's vision used the Sicilian landscape as a stage set up and the real boys of Taormina as actors of the Arcadian scenography he loved to recreate through his photographs. Von Kupfer's world looks like Eden before the fall, Paradise before the fault, a Platonic world where bodies radiate as much as souls.

Love, tenderness, intimacy, friendship of souls and embraces of bodies, purity and innocence... There is so much light and colour in von Kupfer's frescoes, such a freedom of desire and sensuality, such a vision of love... We are at the same time in the intimacy of a private house, on the shores of Lac Majeur, and in the public space of a visual manifesto about the right of homoerotic desires to be lived and accepted.

Von Kupfer's frescoes are lyrical as a song, choregraphic as a ballet.