MATTHIAS KORB: A GERMAN ARTIST PACKS ALL OF THE WORLD — AND MORE — INTO AN OLD, REIMAGINED FARMHOUSE

IN A SMALL TOWN NEAR FRANKFURT, “INITIUM ET FINIS” IS A MULTI-PART, EVER-EVOLVING ART ENVIRONMENT BORN OF BOUNDLESS IMAGINATION AND ENDLESS CREATIVE AMBITION

Published on November 5, 2025

Jo Farb Hernández is professor and gallery director emerita in the department of art and art history at San José State University, in northern California, and the director and chief curator emerita of SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments), a U.S.A.-based nonprofit archive. Her recently authored books include Singular Spaces: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments (2013) and Singular Spaces II (2023).

by Jo Farb Hernández, with Matthias Korb

Since 2008, the German artist Matthias Korb has been transforming an old farmhouse in the small town of Lohrheim, which is located about 58 miles (93 kilometers) northwest of Frankfurt am Main, Korb’s birthplace (1969). He has given this Gesamtkunstwerk of an art environment the Latin name “INITIUM ET FINIS” (“Beginning and End”; Instagram: @initium.et.finis).

The farmhouse in the small town of Lohrheim, which is located about 58 miles (93 kilometers) northwest of Frankfurt am Main, in which Matthias Korb has created his large, site-specific art environment. Photo courtesy of the artist

This extraordinary art space overwhelms a visitor with its large, varied collection of found objects and fabricated artworks. Korb has covered all of the farmhouse’s interior walls, from floor to ceiling, with dense layers of paintings, collages, and mixed-media assemblages. Huge objects and sculptures hang from the ceilings, while cabinets, filled with assorted objects, resemble columns that seemingly rise up out of the floor.

Some 20 rooms are filled with countless objects that the artist has collected over the years, including masks, dolls, taxidermy specimens, measuring instruments, tools, old radios, books, magazines, yellowed photographs, lamps, crucifixes, old furniture, Victorian fabrics, relics, an old prison door, and other curiosities.