Georg Klusemann

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Georg Klusemann in front of one of his works at an exhibition 1980 in Xanten, Germany
Georg Klusemann in front of one of his works at an exhibition 1980 in Xanten, Germany

Georg Klusemann, (born 13 May 1942 in Essen at the Kluse; died 4 May 1981 in Pisa) was a prolific artist and a children book author.

Although he died at only 38 years of age, Georg Klusemann left behind an extensive body of deeply original work.

Georg Klusemann belongs to a group of artists such as Werner Gilles, Eduard Bargheer or Gerhard Hoehme, whose work reflects their adoption of Italian culture. He studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf under Teo Otto, from 1962 to 1968, with Katharina Sieverding and Jörg Immendorff. After extensive travels to Spain, the Orient and Latin America, his work gained a clear original profile (Hans M. Schmidt[1]). Impulses from contemporary European Art can be traced to Joan Miró, Victor Vasarely, Giorgio Morandi or Domenico Gnoli, to Surrealism or OpArt. But the impulses are transformed and integrated into a unique concept that cannot be associated to any known current in Art. Critics have called him "Baroque" (Joachim Burmeister), "Indefatigable and fantastic" (Vittorio Sgarbi),  "Arcimboldesque" (Heiner Stachelhaus), "an oscillator between abstraction and realism, narrative and representation, elusiveness and application"  (Dieter Ronte[2]), or a "legitimator of computer art" (Giampiero Pavanati[3]). Patrick Waldberg, the major biographer of surrealism, wrote of Klusemann's work that it is "full of waving drapes, flying boxes, objects coming up in the air, swelling balloons, windows bursting open, instruments coming to life and all this according to a harmony beyond logic".[4] Georg's biographer Hans M. Schmidt called him an "individualist and a loner of unusual capacities." "The things recognized become uncertain, the apparent truth becomes deception," Hannes Hardering writes of Klusemann's paintings.[5] Klaus Honnef wrote about looking at his works: "The viewer is forced to question his viewpoint, to change it. To decipher the intricacies of these images one must learn to accept ones judgement as always temporary and never ultimate."[6] 

Georg Klusemann worked as a painter, drawer, etcher, and author of children books. His oeuvre comprises at least 350 canvases, 330 etchings, hundreds of drawings, gouaches and water colors, as well as poems and fables. His children books were published by Beltz & Gelberg and Peter Hammer Verlag and are still part of school curricula in German elementary schools because of their playful and imaginative approach to intercultural communication. After several monographies about his work and more than 20 catalogues, the complete works were published in two volumes by Hatje Cantz Verlag in the year 2000. 

Georg Klusemann's paintings and etchings have been the object of more than 40 exhibitions in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Venezuela and the U.S.A. The major retrospectives have taken place at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, at the Goethe-Institut New York, at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan and at the Museo d'arte contemporanea Villa Croce[7] in Genua. His works are part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albertina in Vienna, the Rheinische Landesmuseum in Bonn, the Museo d'arte contemporanea Villa Croce in Genua and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, as well as of numerous private collections.

In 1994, a children's opera based on his Die wundersame Reise nach Esmir was first played at the Ruhrfestspielhaus in Recklinghausen.[8]

He is the protagonist of the personal documentary "Georg" by his daughter Caterina Klusemann, completed in 2008 for Arte/ZDF. In the film several friends and fellow artists like the painter Ulrich Erben, the writer Ingrid Bachér (who had written "There was something magnificent about him, nothing small, narrow, he overflowed with life"), the writer Hermann Schulz and his publisher Hans-Joachim Gelberg as well as his wife, the sociologist Elena Hochman-Klusemann reconstruct his brief but intense life.

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[edit] References

  1. ^ [Hans M. Schmidt: Welttheater, Backstage oder die Schönheit und das Verborgene: Zu Werk und Leben von Georg Klusemann, in: Georg Klusemann, 2 vols. (referred to as "Gesamtwerk"), 2000, 9-74]
  2. ^ [Dieter Ronte: Verità come metafora, in: Orbis sensualium pictus: Diciotti autori per Georg Klusemann, Pisa 1991, 15ff, first 1989]
  3. ^ [Giampiero Pavanti: La risoluzione nelle opere di Georg Klusemann, in: La meccanica della illusione, catalogue for the exhibition at the Museo Palazzo Bagatti Valsecchi, Milan, 1988]
  4. ^ [Patrick Waldberg: Georg Klusemann: La stanza incantata, in: Orbis sensualium pictus, op. cit., 13ff, first 1972]
  5. ^ [Hannes Hardering: Wahrheit wird zum Trug, in: Kulturspiegel no. 23, p1214, 1983]
  6. ^ [Klaus Honnef in: Georg Klusemann: Bilder, Zeichnungen, Collagen, Graphik 1967-1981, ed. Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf 1983]
  7. ^ Italian Infopage on this exhibition
  8. ^ from the composer Matthias Bonitz