Artist
Peter Klasen is a master of contrasts. Of fragment and entirety,
of hard plate against soft skin. He is constantly finding new approaches.
Fusing splinters of reality and dreams into a collage full of life.
Clips from weeklies, bits of cardboard and parts of military planes
and vehicles are but a few of the materials used in his constructs.
In his paintings fateful darkness reveals its relationship to fertile
light; shimmering blues and greens stand in counterpoise to greys
and browns. Roughness against smoothness. Bits of rope and symbolic
tongues of flames in stark contrast to supplicant hands stretched
skywards. Naked female bodies, breasts and parted lips are mingled
with numbers and symmetric colour fields.
As
far back as 1962, along with figures such as Adami, Erró
and Télémaque, Peter Klasen was one of the founding
fathers of La Nouvelle Figuration, the new trend that brought the
importance of figurative art into the spotlight. This direction
developed almost at the same time as Pop Art picked up momentum
in the US, with luminaries like Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselmann,
Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol to name but a few. Since his artistic
debut at Galleri Friedrich in Munich in 1964 however, Klasen has
evolved a truly individual imagery.
It
would seem a paradox that Peter Klasen creates a balance between
the sensual and the industrial, a cross-fertilisation between the
agreeable and the disgusting, the tasteful and the abhorrent. But
it is this very contradiction that more often than not is expressed
in his pictures. In addition to paintings on linen canvas, iron,
sheet metal and wood, he has created several public works including
the decoration for part of the La Défense business district
in Paris.
Peter
Klasen was born in Lübeck in 1935. He began to draw and paint
even as a child, encouraged in these first artistic strivings by
his grandfather, an art and antiques dealer. His time at the Berlin
Academy of Arts in post-war Germany proved a turning point as he
was inspired to begin painting in an avant-garde style. Around the
same time he met Georg Bazelitz, known for his Neo-Impressionistic
works. In the early 1960s, Klasen moved to Paris. His first years
were tough – poverty and the lack of an understanding audience
plagued him. His breakthrough was not to come until the 1970s. He
had his first exhibition in Sweden in 1988 at Galleri GKM Siwert
Bergström in Malmö.
Exhibitions
have been staged in Frankfurt, Milan, Los Angeles and Barcelona
to celebrate Peter Klasen’s 70th birthday. This coming autumn
some of his works can be seen at La Maison Européenne de
la Photographie in Paris.
The
art expert Gilles Plazy has written an incisive analysis of his
work, at one point saying that several of his pictures represent
a partition, a mental Berlin wall – the image of a divided
Germany many still carry within. It is true, but at the same time
it must be stressed that Klasen’s wall also provides a portal.
He opens a door towards remembering and to the ambiguous regions
of the subconscious.
Johan
Persson, 14 March 2005
