Artist of the day: September 2024

Konrad Klapheck (1935 – 2023) was a German painter and graphic artist whose style of painting combined features of Surrealism and Neorealism.

Konrad Klapheck was born in Düsseldorf 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. Klapheck's works of the mid-1950s are in a magic realist style that became more idiosyncratic when he painted the first of his typewriters. 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, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, Klapheck's "ironic treatment of everyday mechanics" prefigured pop art in its magnification of the trivial. He was also close to French Surrealism and André Breton 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.

© 2024. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Konrad Klaphec or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Konrad Klapheck

Typewriter, 1955

Fertility (formerly fantasy machine), 1960

The sex bomb and her companion, 1964

The beautiful housewife, 1967

The smile of the augurs, 1968

The Power of Oblivion, 1968

Infatuation, 1969

The glory and misery of reforms, 1971 drawing

Zipper, 1974

The Master Thinker (formerly Small Typewriter), 1976-77

The glory and misery of reforms, 1976-77

The Super Nut (formerly Drilling Machine II), 1977

A little hope, 1978

The Legislator (formerly- Large Key Machine), 1980

The dubiousness of fame (formerly Bicycle I), 1980

Steam iron (mother in law), 1980

The Chosen One, 1981

Autobiography, 1983

Davis Cup, 1983

Mother's prayers, 1983

The question of the Sphinx, 19855

L'homme dans la femme 1986

Lamento No 11, 1986

Drawing for Le Présage, 1987

The Sacrifice, 1989

The thwarted apostle, 1992

The potent grandfather, 1998

The impatience of the Sphinx, 1998

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (1962), is a British artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalization. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses. As Shonibare is paralyzed on one side of his body, he uses assistants to make works under his direction.

Yinka Shonibare was born in London, England. When he was three years old, his family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where his father practiced law. When he was 17 years old, Shonibare returned to the UK to take his A-levels at Redrice School. At the age of 18, he contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, which resulted in a long-term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed..

His interdisciplinary practice uses citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities within the context of globalisation. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, his works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.

In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2008, his mid-career survey began at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, traveling in 2009 to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. In 2010, his first public art commission ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London and is in the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

In 2013, he was elected a Royal Academician and was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Order of the British Empire’ in 2019. His installation ‘The British Library’ was acquired by Tate in 2019 and is currently on display at Tate Modern, London.

Shonibare was awarded the prestigious Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award in 2021. A major retrospective of his work opened at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg in the same year followed by his co-ordination of The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London which opened in September 2021.

The survey solo exhibition, Yinka Shonibare CBE: Planets in My Head, opened in April 2022 at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan followed by the unveiling in June 2022 of a major new sculptural work, Wind Sculpture in Bronze I at Royal Djurgården, Stockholm.

To mark Sharjah Biennial's 30th anniversary in February 2023, Shonibare was commissioned to create a series of new works for the exhibition. He also unveiled a new outdoor sculpture commissioned by the David Oluwale Memorial Association in Aire Park, Leeds as part of Leeds 2023.

In 2024, the Serpentine, London UK, presented a solo exhibition of works in their Serpentine South gallery titled Suspended States. Shonibare's work is also featured at the Venice Biennale 2024 as part of the Nigerian Pavilion, in the group show: Nigeria Imaginary.

Shonibare is now disabled, physically incapable of making works himself, and relies upon a team of assistants, operating himself as a conceptual artist.

Shonibare's disability has increased with age, resulting in him using an electric wheelchair. In later life, Shonibare has discussed his disability and its role within his work as a creative artist.[46] In 2013, Shonibare was announced as patron of the annual Shape Arts "Open" exhibition where disabled and non-disabled artists are invited to submit work in response to an Open theme.

© 2024. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Yinka Shonibare or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only