Peter Klasen, born in Lübeck on 18 August 1935, is a German painter, photographer and sculptor working on the theme of industry.
Starting in 1955, Peter Klasen began learning lithography and airbrush techniques. He entered the Berlin University of Arts. It was then the avant-garde school and benefited from the presence of young teachers trained in the spirit of the Bauhaus or German expressionism, such as Hann Trier, an important painter of the informal school. He follows the courses of Will Grohmann, Hans Richter and Karl Schmidt-Rottliff. In 1959, he arrived in Paris and, in 1960, moved to a workshop on Rue de Clignancourt. In 1962, he was one of the founders of the Nouvelle Figuration. This movement, also known as Figuration narrative, included Valerio Adami, Erró, Jacques Monory, Bernard Rancillac and Hervé Télémaque. His first solo exhibition was held in Paris in 1966.
Committed artist, revolted, his works evoke industrial society, a smooth world where the artist plays multiple signs and objects: distant inaccessible beauties, sensual mouths, concrete walls, metal objects, kitchen utensils, industrial machinery, manometers, circuit breakers, ammeters, dials, steering wheels, pipes, pictograms and keywords: poison / radioactive / corrosive…
A major Narrative Figuration artist, Peter Klasen through photography, painting, sculpture, three-dimensional installations, also represents an acute and demanding awareness of contemporary life. His work crystallizes worries, gathers symptoms while provoking reflection and freeing the imagination. Both collage and trompe – the eye, his creations are inspired by urban reality, its signs, its codes, its coldness and its hardness.
What makes the originality of Peter Klasen, is the intention that animates his work and the material of choice that he gave himself to express it (the work based on photography). Contemporary artist in his means and his researches Peter Klasen also wants to be a watchdog of contemporary life. He wants to emphasize its ambivalence, the inseparable and opposite aspects: the fascination and seduction it exerts by its effectiveness, and the obvious or hidden dangers it conceals.