In 1955, Konrad Klapheck set out to paint a typewriter in as much detail as he could, countering the trend for abstract lyricism that then dominated the European art scene. This was the start of an auspicious career spanning nearly forty years which saw the artist painting machines and objects whose cold outward appearance formed a striking constrast with their symbolic value in his art. As a friend of the Parisian surrealists, he imbued the equipment, utensils, and pipes he painted with meaning rooted in visual and psychological associations. The pipes drip, the shoe trees lie in a heap, the machines crush, pierce, bore holes, shake, and clatter, all evoking loving coupledom, fatherhood, motherhood, and all sorts of deliberately unspoken disharmonies. Only in 1997 did he finally place human figures in his compositions, which remained as strict as ever. His work became more overtly sensuous and witty while still exploring the same themes, reading human relationships in terms of (social) constructions, machinations, and orchestrations. Klapheck recorded his own story in such allusive terms that it attained universal relevance.

The exhibition begins with one final typewriter, painted by a now old man looking back at his early steps in art, offering a retrospective view of Klapheck’s musical, erotic works as an introduction to the work of his early career.

Konrad Klapheck was born in 1935 in Düsseldorf, where he lives to this day.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of the Fondation Bonhôte pour l’art contemporain, the Minerva Kunststiftung, the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation and the Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art.