Fritz Klemm

Fritz Klemm was a latecomer, a late discoverer. He only started painting in 1951, when he was almost 50 years old, dismissing everything that came before as "finger exercises". in 1972, at the age of 70, he had his first solo exhibition. Fritz Klemm was an under-appreciated artist throughout his life, which is also due to the fact that he made little fuss about himself. His self-portraits show him as an empty silhouette behind painting utensils or as a fragile figure, pushed to the edge by a picture-dominating curtain. The self is not expressed in the portrait, but in his actions, symbolised by the painting table, brushes and paints. "My realism is firm in its vividness, dry in its realisation and succinct in its statement," is how the artist outlined his work a few years before his death in 1990. This is an interesting contradiction to the effect of his paintings. By detaching himself from the objects in his depictions, Klemm brings the things he depicts to life: The viewer is challenged to reverse the process of creation, to reconnect things with reality, to translate them back, to perceive them anew. The line separates the surfaces, organises and proportions them, the plasticity of the material used does the rest to make Fritz Klemm's pictures speak. There is nothing more and nothing more is needed.

Biographical information
Fritz Klemm (*1902 in Mannheim) studied at the Badische Landeskunstschule Karlsruhe in the 1920s before working as an art teacher at various schools. from 1948 to 1970, he taught at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. In the last two decades of his life, Klemm devoted himself exclusively to his own work. The artist died in Karlsruhe in 1990.