It is still not clear to me if i should call the art by Konrad Klapheck the german equivalent of Pop Art or German realism. …Just tell me what you think yourself?
Fact is that his art is highly recognizable and emerged in an era where ordinary items like typewriters and teakettles were blown up, abstracted and enhanced and painted on canvas. The art of Konrad Klapheck could be described as a typical “east german” kind of art the use of green and brown are very present in his paintings, but where this comes from is not clear, because he was born , raised and even studied in Dusseldorf. But his use of these specific colors makes this not the happy kind of Pop Art like the Pop Art of the Americans or the French, but a restrained kind of Pop Art. 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 have 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, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, Klapheck’s “ironic treatment of everyday mechanics” prefigures Pop art in its magnification of the trivial. www.ftn-books.com has some Klapheck titles available
