Mati Klarwein

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Annunciation by Mati Klarwein from the Santana Abraxas album cover.

Mati Klarwein (April 9, 1932 – March 7, 2002) was a painter best known for his works used on the covers of music albums.

Klarwein was born in Hamburg, Germany. His family was of Jewish origin and fled to Palestine when he was two years old after the rise of Nazi Germany. Klarwein grew up in Palestine and Israel but subsequently travelled widely and lived in many different countries. He died in Deià on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

One of Klarwein's paintings, Annunciation (1961), was seen in reproduction by the musician Carlos Santana and subsequently used by his band Santana for the cover image of their second album Abraxas (1970). In the same years Klarwein produced comparably striking designs for the covers of two Miles Davis albums, Bitches Brew (1969) and Live-Evil (1971), as well as a powerful portrait of Jimi Hendrix. The association of his images with these very successful and widely admired countercultural musicians made Klarwein's work known outside the circle of lovers of contemporary art.

Klarwein is still best known for his art of the 1960s and 1970s, with its clear links to surrealism (Klarwein studied with the Viennese Fantastic Realist Ernst Fuchs), popular psychedelic imagery, and religious art from a number of different traditions. He also worked more conventionally across a variety of genres including still life, landscape, and portrait.