If machines or household appliances had a soul and character, then Konrad Klapheck discovered them. Typewriters and sewing machines, bicycle bells, shower heads, hoses, cables and even shoe trees have been aptly humanized by the subtle artist from Düsseldorf. The “machine painter” Konrad Klapheck died on Sunday at the age of 88. This was announced by his children Elisa Klapheck and David Klapheck.
Her father died in a Jewish nursing home in Düsseldorf after a long, serious illness. “He fell asleep peacefully and never woke up.”
idiosyncratic titles
Klapheck has been painting apparatuses in series since the mid-1950s. In 1955 he painted his first of many typewriters, and as late as 2011 he added a version he dubbed “The Despot”. He never painted a computer.
He called a sewing machine picture ironically ambiguous “The Offended Bride”. Jets of steam shoot like rockets out of the holes in an iron set up aggressively: Klapheck titled his work “The Mother-in-Law”, another variant was called “The House Dragon”.
Klapheck was born on February 10, 1935 in Düsseldorf as an only child into a family of art historians and always remained loyal to the city. His father was dismissed as a professor from the art academy by the National Socialists in 1934 and died when Konrad Klapheck was four years old. Konrad Klapheck studied at the Düsseldorf Academy under Bruno Goller from 1954 and later became an art professor there like his father.
Invitation from André Breton
When almost all international artists painted abstractly in the 1950s, Klapheck bucked the trend and turned to objects – and stayed with them until 1997. In Paris, the chief surrealist André Breton became aware of Klapheck’s cool objects and invited him to the last surrealist exhibition in 1965.
Breton then ennobled Klapheck in an essay on erotic relationships between man and machine. In it he compared Klapheck to a snake charmer who had the power to make machines dance to a tune.
With his surrealistic machine painting, Klapheck developed his very own style. He painted technical devices and everyday objects with precision. You can always spot a Klapheck device quickly: by the cold metallic sheen, by the monstrosity, or by the fact that the seemingly realistic bike or motorbike is always missing an essential part to be able to function.
Classics of the post-war avant-garde
Klapheck’s early machine pictures are now regarded as classics of the post-war avant-garde. On the other hand, many critics rejected nude painting, to which he had devoted himself since 1997. The faces of his naked women appear mask-like due to a grey-metallic sheen.
The eroticization of the machines experienced a drastic sexualized continuation in Klapheck’s nudes, for example in acts of love in the cemetery. It is true that the late erotic pictures resembled Klapheck’s earlier machine pictures in terms of painting style and sophisticated composition. Ultimately, however, he was only successful with his human portraits of everyday objects.
His works are often autobiographical, Klapheck said. A sailor in a Russian uniform playing the accordion next to a naked girl on the bed is reminiscent of Klapheck’s childhood experience. During the war he fled with his mother to live with his grandparents in Leipzig and as a boy witnessed the invasion of the Red Army in 1945. The portrait of a boy drawing ruins (2003) is probably a reminder of the destroyed Düsseldorf.
Klapheck’s deceased wife Lilo was also Jewish, and his daughter Elisa is one of the few female rabbis in Germany.
