Konrad Klapheck (10 February 1935 – 30 July 2023) was a German painter and

graphic artist A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming l ...

whose style of painting combined features of

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

and Neorealism.

Biography

Konrad Klapheck was born in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

on 10 February 1935 to arts historians and professors Richard and Anna Klappheck (née Strümpell, daughter of Adolf Strümpell). From 1954 to 1956 Konrad studied painting under Bruno Goller at the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Ma ...

.Grove Art Online. Klapheck's works of the mid-1950s are in a

magic realist Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a style or genre of fiction and art that presents a realistic view of the world while incorporating magical elements, often blurring the lines between speculation and reality. ''Magical rea ...

style that became more idiosyncratic when he painted the first of his

typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...

s. His subsequent paintings, often large in scale, are precise and seemingly realistic depictions of technical equipment, machinery, and everyday objects, but strangely alienated; they are "monumental, amusingly absurd and sexually suggestive". Klapheck's subjects through the years included (in order of introduction) typewriters, sewing machines, water taps and showers, telephones, irons, shoes, keys, saws, car tires, bicycle bells, and clocks. Influenced by

Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...

, and

Max Ernst Max Ernst (; 2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic trai ...

, Klapheck's "ironic treatment of everyday mechanics" prefigured pop art in its magnification of the trivial. He was also close to French

and

André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

wrote his last published text about a Klapheck exhibition at Galerie Sonnabend in 1965. Between 1992 and 2002, he painted friends, colleagues, and celebrities from the international art scene. He became a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1979. Klapheck died on 30 July 2023, at the age of 88.

Notes

References

*Grove Art Online *

External links

Konrad Klapheck on Artcyclopedia
1935 births 2023 deaths Academic staff of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf German artists Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni Artists from Düsseldorf {{Germany-artist-stub