Peter KLASEN

Born in 1935 in Lübeck, Germany
Lives and works in Vincennes, France

In the early 1960s, the artist produced airbrushed canvases. To his colourful paintings with their vibrant stretches of at colour, he added objects, often made of metal. Peter Klasen’s work is steeped in its era. Haunted by the destruction of Germany during World War II, the artist depicts a cold industrial, technical urban world in the 1960s, to which he would add the urban culture of street art in the 1980s and digital technologies in the 1990s. Often illuminated by harsh neon lighting, his compositions often encompass warmer fragments that let hope peep through. Accepted at the College of Fine Arts in Berlin, which was then Germany’s premier avant-garde school, Peter Klasen took classes from great artists influenced by Bauhaus and German expressionism. As winner of the German industrial sponsorship prize, he received a study grant and chose to set off for Paris where he would establish his studio. In 1964, Peter Klasen and 34 other artists participated in the narrative figuration movement’s exhibition entitled “Mythologies quotidiennes”. Now a major figure in that artistic trend that marked the revival of imagery in painting, the artist pursued a career of international renown. The retrospective at the ARC Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris in 1971 would be his rst solo show at a museum of stature.